The move, effective July 1, is part of Microsoft's regular update of its licensing program. The software maker said it is not changing the licensing terms associated with any of its software, but instead is trying to make those terms more understandable to customers.
"What customers told us is they are really confused," said Sunny Charlebois, a product manager in Microsoft's worldwide licensing and pricing unit. Charlebois said Microsoft's previous outline of various products and their usage rules was more than 100 pages. "It was legalise; it was very difficult to understand."
By grouping all of its 70 or so products into nine categories, Microsoft expects that it can cut the length of the "product use rights" treatise in half. Some software, for example, is licensed per server, while other programs are licensed per server processor. Still others require a fee for each desktop that connects, a so-called client access license (CAL).
With the new effort, Microsoft is grouping its products based on these categories and will also aim to put future products into one of the nine areas rather than create new categories. But even with the latest move, Microsoft said it still has a long way to go before things could be characterised as simple.
"Yes, we have a lot of work to do," Charlebois said.
Microsoft makes minor changes to its licensing program on a quarterly basis. Last September, for example, the company made permanent a program that allows customers to upgrade their software license from standard-edition status to enterprise-edition status without having to buy a completely new license for that product. In December, it launched a product use rights Web page, making information that had been only available in a copy-protected document more easily accessible.
And people say open source licences are complex.
What utter rubbish.
As a user. go and read the GPL and see how much applies to you.
Then go and read this monstrosity from Microsoft
http://www.microsoftvolumelicensing.com/userights/Pur%20Archive/MicrosoftProductUseRights(Worlwide)(English)(April2005).doc
and see how much affects you.
Them the next time someone says that open source licences are complez, slap them. Hard.