Windows Vista Licence terms - say what?
This has got to be a mistake. (Why do I seem to say that a lot recently when reviewing an action taken by Microsoft?)
The Windows Vista team blog posted a note about the terms of the licence for Windows Vista the other day, and it contains one or two interesting things. Possibly the most interesting is one that was not highlighted in the Vista team blog, and when you read about this particular bit you'll probably understand why. The first two items I highlight were mentioned as noteworthy in their blog, and the last was not.
The Good
Increase of the 'warranty' period from 90 days to 1 year. Companies need to take responsibility for the quality of software produced, and this is a small start in the right direction.
The Bad
Failing a validation check (e.g. Activation and WGA) will result in certain parts of the OS being deactivated. I actually wouldn't be bothered about this, if it wasn't for the fact that one of the areas that will be deactivated is the anti-spyware components.
At a recent meeting I had with Websense, they noted that on a recent
survey of a 4500 user business organisation, over 20% of the computers
were infected with spyware, and spewed an excessive amount of traffic
onto the web continously over the monitoring period. Keep in mind that
this is a business network, so this 20% is in spite of the usual corporate protections that usually get put in (e.g. corporate AV, border firewalls, etc).
It's Microsoft's choice how they protect their products from piracy, and it's our choice if we decide their measures are too draconian and intrude too far into how legitimate users use their system, and shop elsewhere. But when they opt to switch off the spyware protection on a system, they are not impacting just the 'customer' with warez product but also the rest of the Internet, for such malware typically spews sewage onto the Internet just as fast as the net connection it's on will allow.
So I have to question any decision to weaken security when the biggest impact will be on other Internet users who are also Microsoft customers.
The very, very ugly.
The ugly was noticed by techweb and reported again by the Inquirer. This is the bit I'm struggling to believe.
Reviewing the terms of the Home Premium licence, section 15 is very interesting and unsettling ("Reassign to another device").
Software Other than Windows Anytime Upgrade. The first user of the software may
reassign the license to another device one time. If you reassign the license, that other device
becomes the “licensed device.”
See the problem? "One Time". So what about those people who like to upgrade frequently? Or early adopters who buy Vista to go onto a machine they have now, and upgrade quickly to a new machine to take better advantage of what Vista can do, and hence might want to upgrade to new hardware again during the lifetime of Vista? Hardware enthusiast? Regualr upgrader? You're probably screwed mate.
Very ugly indeed. Personally, I can't believe the EU's antitrust comission is messing around debating irrelevancies like whether or not Windows should include a media player and can't find time to call foul over a fundemental abuse of the rights of customers like this. I guess this shows three things
- Microsoft really are out of control
- Politicians are totally useless
- You really do need to consider either a Mac or downloading a copy of Ubuntu.