

CEO dares Microsoft to sue him over virtual desktops that flout licensing - GreekOphion
http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/03/ceo-dares-microsoft-to-sue-him-over-virtual-desktops-that-flout-licensing.ars

======
forrestthewoods
This really is a fascinating problem. If Guise Bule gets his way the the
maximum number of software licenses sold would be equivalent to the maximum
number of concurrent users. I don't think that's particularly desirable for
either developers or users.

A similar situation exists with video games. The market is going pure digital
and gamers want the ability to sell "used" digital games. If that were
possible then a middleman service would appear which would instantly "buy" and
"sell" the game as you launched and closed a game. A wildly successful game
such as Skyrim sells millions of copies but only had ~300,000k concurrent
users (on PC) at launch. A couple of months later and that number is only
~50,000. Suffice to say this will never be allowed to happen.

~~~
psykotic
This already happened for video games under similar circumstances with
Internet cafes. These days the typical video game EULA prohibits use in
Internet cafes without a special license, but as far as I know that has not
been tested in court. The easier workaround from the developer and publisher's
point of view is to just go online-only, which to a large extent has already
happened, especially in Asia where gaming in Internet cafes is widespread.

~~~
forrestthewoods
Nice point! Valve has a special program just for cyber cafes
(<https://cafe.steampowered.com/index.php> ). I have no idea how much it costs
but you can pay some recurring subscription for access to a large number of
titles. My impression is that most popular cafes pay this and it does very
well for both Valve and the cafes.

~~~
bane
"Add a wide range of 100+ popular titles to your catalogue.

We provide complimentary promotional materials and marketing support for your
cafés.

We are happy to support for in-café tournaments and special events. Please let
us know about your upcoming events.

All participants have access to the private Café Forums where they may discuss
trends and issues in the cybercafé industry with fellow café owners and
operators."

Once again Valve is showing the world how things should be done, is wildly
successful, and nobody else seems to pay attention.

It shouldn't be such a huge issue to just meet your customer in the middle.

------
jlawer
The funny thing is the worst thing Microsoft could do to this is ignore
them.... That would leave the issue unresolved, exactly what the Desktop as a
Service people don't want.

I suppose the real question is if Microsoft's position on the desktop makes it
illegal to do a favorable deal with On-Live? I am not aware if this would be
illegal or not? One would think it would be at least against the spirit of the
law to carve out a market niche for a microsoft "old boy" and protect it
through their monopoly position... but it wouldn't surprise me if there is no
regulation in place to stop this.

I am wondering what the shareholders think. They are refusing to license to
most players in order to protect windows and office on the desktop. On the
other hand they are giving up a new non-trivial revenue stream during the
transition period. I would think a lot of investors would want to take the
short term cash and run.

Having previously worked for Red Hat on the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization
support team, it always was strange looking at the VDI products that it was SO
SO expensive to run the infrastructure purely due to Microsoft Licensing.
Microsoft don't want to loose the grip so they make VDI licensing difficult,
instead pushing mixed virtualization where you need to run windows on your
desktop as well.

VDI struck me as almost purely a windows solution. If your running linux you
have a range of other options to have multiple users on a single
infrastructure in a workable way without having hundreds of VMs.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Why don't more Desktop as a Service organizations get together and refine
LibreOffice to heavily compete against Microsoft?

It clearly works; look at other open source solutions that are a collaborative
effort. Linux as a whole, Python, Ruby, OpenStack, etc.

~~~
rbanffy
LibreOffice's codebase is enormous and complicated. It's being cleaned up, but
it may still be hard to maintain. It's doable, of course, but if you implement
too much Office compatibility, you risk Microsoft suing you for some frivolous
patent they keep just for the purpose of crushing LibreOffice when it becomes
a threat.

~~~
rbanffy
It's interesting how the downvoting of comments critical to Microsoft is time-
related (down trends around noon and midnight UTC, up trends shifted about 6
hours). One day I'll have to write a bot to check up/down votes and relate
them to sentiment.

The demographics may prove interesting.

~~~
rbanffy
to say nothing about downvoting of comments that are made to the wrong
comments ;-)

That should teach me not to post right before going to bed.

------
vDesktop
Guise Bule here !

Am just about to begin an IAmA on reddit if you fancy joining me there :
<http://bit.ly/redditor>

Or follow my updates on twitter about this :

<https://twitter.com/#!/Guise_Bule>

OR go read my blog post : <http://bit.ly/MicroFap>

~~~
Drbble
Wow, with that bitly URL for your AMA, you could launch a second career as an
Internet marketing consultant.

~~~
vDesktop
Yeah, attention to detail is important :)

------
Osiris
I'm curious, why don't they just provide Windows Server 2008 R2? With the
Desktop Experience installed, it's functionally identical to Windows 7, and
you can license an unlimited copies on Windows Server Datacenter Edition,
which is $3,000 per CPU.

I have a hosted WS2008R2 instance that I can RDP into and use for whatever I
want. Are there some other licensing constraints that prevent WS2008 from
being used in that manner?

------
savrajsingh
This is definitely an interesting space. I keep a Parallels Windows 7 VM on my
machine, and I use it for the amazing features in the Windows version of
Microsoft Office (former MS Office UI PM here). If I could replace that with
an always up-to-date cloud-based copy (I'm always installing security patches
since I rarely boot it) I'd do so in a heartbeat.

------
jpdoctor
Not that I don't admire the guy's bravado, but there is no obligation for
Microsoft to sue everyone equally.

IANAL so correct as necessary, but he seems like he's tilting at windmills.

~~~
rbanffy
nknight points this out very well:
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3726555>

~~~
jpdoctor
Not really. The amount of time and money for DOJ to prosecute microsoft the
first time was huge, and there are competing virtual desktops, so good luck
getting them on this point.

~~~
nknight
Antitrust cases against big companies are always going to be expensive, but
one of the many stupid things the DOJ and states did in the Microsoft case was
making Microsoft fight for its life. It was unnecessarily aggressive and drove
up the expense.

And, there were competing browsers and operating systems during the first
case, too. The mere existence of competitors does not preclude antitrust
action. Just ask AT&T and T-Mobile.

~~~
jpdoctor
> _The mere existence of competitors does not preclude antitrust action._

Agreed. I just don't see the anti-competitive behavior around virtual desktops
that we did with WinOS and IE, so I think it would be a very tough sell.

~~~
rbanffy
What are the reasons to favor one specific vendor giving it a key advantage
over the other? Microsoft seems to be clearly playing favorites here. What are
they trying to do? Give a monopoly to their favorite vendor? Is it legal to
use your monopoly to expand someone else's? Can we really call this company,
with its seemingly deep and strong ties to Microsoft, a separate entity? If
it's not, this is clearly something the DoJ should look into.

~~~
chc
"Use your monopoly"? What monopoly is Microsoft using?

~~~
regularfry
That over the Windows desktop. There's nobody else you can get a license from.

------
powertower
I don't get it...

If I provide a virtualized hardware desktop hosting platform that can enable
the client to load an ISO of Windows and enter his own serial key, am I
violating any Windows hosted desktop restrictions?

Or am I only violating it if I supply the serial keys (from legit
separate/per-customer/never re-asigned OEM copies)?

I think it's the latter, because in the former there is absolutly no contract
between myself and Microsoft. What the client does with my platform is his
business and doing. If he activates Windows there, that's between him and
Microsoft.

So what is the problem that these articles are trying to point out? How is it
difficult for customers to buy their own OEM copy and supply a serial key?...

Cusomter goes to your panel, clicks to load some already predefined or
prehosted VHD or ISO, then supplies serial key him/herself. Problem solved? Or
is this all about the cost of OEM copies?

~~~
wvenable
From the article: "We do know from Microsoft's blog post that vendors can only
host Windows 7 desktops in a virtual desktop infrastructure setting if the
customers buy their own licenses from Microsoft. Even if this requirement is
met, the vendor must host the desktops on separate physical hardware for each
customer, ruling out a multitenant arrangement."

You might be able to enable the client to load an ISO of Windows and have him
enter his serial key _but_ you'd have to separate hardware for each customer
making any virtualization completely pointless.

------
brisance
I don't think Microsoft is playing favorites with OnLive; rather, they are
trying to save their hardware "partners" from certain doom since they do not
have any such offerings. This would indirectly impact Microsoft itself since
OEM licensing makes Microsoft a lot of money.

------
J3L2404
Well it is digital so a copy of it is only like savoring the scent.

~~~
vonkow
It's software, everything's a digital copy.

------
alanh
I’m going to lose mad karma, but we have done all this before, so:

 _zzzzzZZZZZZZ_

