Licensing terms too light on carrot, too heavy on stick
ENT News | at | by Mike
For many Microsoft sites, licensing seems to be endless trials and tribulations. Microsoft took a hail of bullets over Licensing 6.0, which many in the industry perceived as a heavy-handed approach to squeeze more revenues from budget-strapped end-users. The customer pushback to Licensing 6.0 was unprecedented in the industry, and Microsoft did actually give way on some points by adding more flexibility to some of its terms.
Unfortunately, most of the time, licensing is a stick. And there's nothing remarkable about Microsoft's heavy-handedness. Many vendors are pushy with their licensing terms. IBM has a long history of locking customers into upgrade paths. Oracle's licensing is just as heavy-handed, and even more expensive, than Microsoft's. Even in the carefree Linux world, coercion seems to be the rule. On another front, The SCO Group is apparently planning to simply send out bills to major Linux users for $700 per CPU (or $1,400 per CPU after a grace period) to buy the SCO Intellectual Property License for Linux.