[mso] Re: what version of MS Office to purchase?
- From: "Greg Chapman" <greg@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <mso@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2002 02:33:26 -0500
I'm missing a perfect opportunity to stay out of this but I can't so
I'll post on this topic exactly once. I agree with you, Helga, that MS'
meaasures to protect its product are heavy-handed and, I believe,
extremely abusive of the customer. However, they have managed to do that
very kind of business their entire lifetime. The success of DOS can
almost exclusively be laid at the feet of the strict policies they
enforced against OEMs in the early days. I recently had the opportunity
to tell an MS Reginal Rep where he could stuff it as he tried to stiff
us on buying Windows 2000 CALs to cover all our Macintosh computers. His
assertion was the license terms specified that any network printing by a
Macintosh constituted a CAL consumed. My question to him was how he
figured he could get away with that since all 2000 of our Macs are
capable and do print directly to the net printers. He said it didn't
matter to him. Well, it's my budget and when you want $20 a seat from me
when I'm not even touching your licenses, you can KMA! He helped MS miss
a perfect opportunity to wipe the Macs off our net.
But, I've got to contradict you on your representation of what goes on
at eBay. Those OEMs that engage in what you describe are both pursued
and shut down from legally obtaining OEM distributions. I'm having
trouble finding the headlines but last year, I know of at least 2
publicly reported sweeps through eBay vendors with the sole intent of
shutting the abusers down. Check this thread from 1999:
http://www.xent.com/nov99/0347.html for an example of how eBay has
agreed to watch for such things. The kind of transaction you're talking
about is not specifically proscribed in MS OEM terms but it is
definitely outside the spirit of the agreement between an OEM and
Microsoft. Believe it or not, spirit of the agreement and original
intent *are* legal considerations that are exercised in the courts
surprisingly often.
Microsoft also does not publically disclose the complete terms against
its OEMs. You can easily find out though; simply buy at least 4 licenses
for any one product per quarter and you can apply for the starter kit at
http://www.microsoft.com/oem/sbp/starterkits.asp
For consumers, though, Microsoft has published one set of information
that makes the whole thing clear for an owner:
http://www.microsoft.com/oem/counterfeit98.asp
Just follow the links. You'll notice that as you follow the links at
http://www.microsoft.com/piracy/howtotell/ that a few things are
consistently stated about how to tell you're legal. First, can you find
your Certificate of Authenticity? Second, is your CD real with the edge
to edge hologram? Those are all you need.
The point Dian is making, though is that once that media is distributed
and installed, it's installed with the PC it's running on. OEM licenses,
whether it makes sense or not, are specifically attached to the hardware
at that point. This is one of the unique things about an OEM license.
Standard shrink-wrap doesn't fall under this classification unless it's
an upgrade applied against an OEM install. These points have nothing to
do with Product Activation at this point in the discussion although that
definitely works based on the hardware mix in your system. She's
absolutely correct in this assertion.
MS doesn't want a single Intel based PC being delivered (especially bulk
orders) without an Operating System and asks its OEMs to report
customers who order volumes of systems barren of an OS. It's a bad
assumption on the part of MS that these people are breaking some
licensing rule just because they assume some outfit hasn't gone nuts and
installed Linux on all the desktops. It's largely this policy that has
fed to the larger part the Linux and Open-Source movement. Profitable or
not, this alternative *has* given people, power geeks at the very least,
a choice as to how they are going to compute. It doesn't matter that the
system's polish isn't as grand as the MS package if they can get the
more valuable prize; freedom from abusive licensing.
I feel for consumers here because with software licensing we're talking
about intellectual property, a hot debate for quite a long time. The
customer winds up confused. As consumers, whenever someone who wants our
money confuses us, we're pretty sure they are acting like thieves. And
license agreements that can generate revenue must be obtuse, vague and
ambiguous to a scientific degree. Can't blame customers for being a
little defiant. And, when talking about intellectual property, we're
normally talking about published works like software, books, music and
art. I can't legally make copies of a book and distribute them. But a
book publisher can't suddenly show up on my door and announce that they
want their book back because they think I used it incorrectly. So what
makes software manufacturers think they're so special that they can be
different form other copyright holders?
There is no doubt, however, that many OEMs have engaged in practices
they agreed not to, essentially being liars and thieves themselves. Oh,
and we may as well include MS when applying that label. Sadly, MS and
these OEMs are not unique, either. Go take a look at that collective lot
of FUD mongers and legal losers called the BSA. This corporate
consortium is engaging in thuggish behavior on behalf of Microsoft,
Novell, Sun, Adobe, ad infinitum, and have scared a lot of people with
legal threats that they can't back up in court. They trade in
embarrassment and employ tactics that would land any of the rest of us
in jail for blackmail.
When looking for bastards on this issue, there seems to be no shortage.
But Dian wasn't telling you a lie.<g>
Greg Chapman
http://www.mousetrax.com
"Counting in binary is as easy as 01, 10, 11!
With thinking this clear, is coding really a good idea?"
>
But you are wrong. MS is not going to sue them for piracy anytime soon,
because this is not piracy. You do get an individual CD key that has
not been registered. It's a real license. Go ahead. Complain to the
Microsoft Legal department or whoever enforces their software licenses.
If Microsoft feels they are being ripped off, they can stop shipping
their products to these dealers. If these dealers are selling
counterfeit product, they have a well advertised addresses, in the USA.
Go get 'em.
In the mean time, you can't blame consumers from taking advantage of a
lower price for the same product. In a way you are right The people
being ripped off ARE the people who pay the full retail package price.
But they are being ripped off by Microsoft, not by the other consumers
who buy licenses in this way. This isn't a pirated product, its a MS
product sold under MS policy.
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