Select Licensing

The joke is that Microsoft's own records about Select licensing are in disarray - have any of you large businesses out there ever taken the trouble to look at the records MS keeps about your licences? You ought to!

Some years ago, MS stopped sending out real-life paper licences ("licence confirmations") whenever a Select customer coughed up for yet another Microsoft "fix" to sooth their addiction cravings, which is understandable, but the underlying assumption is that MS keep accurate records.

In fact, the LARs (Large Account Resellers) get such a tiny proportion of the licence fee (about £2 for each copy of Office!) that there's just no incentive for them to make sure that they are recording the sale accurately on Microsoft's records systems, but legally (according to Microsoft): "License confirmations from Microsoft are the only legal evidence that a license is owned, and not a certificate sent by the LAR as a proof of purchase." So if the LAR gets it wrong, the customer is legally stuffed - they have paid, but are still unlicensed, and are liable to pay AGAIN for another licence when an audit carried out within the Select terms and conditions reveals that fact!

Having seen the internal results of such an audit, which seemed to show massive underlicensing in a group of properly-licensed MS customers (the licences existed, but were applied to the wrong Select agreements!), I feel sorry for those still hooked in this way. Bite the Open Source bullet whilst you still can, the pain represents the cold turkey you will suffer whilst getting "clean" but you will feel 100% better when you are cured! :-)