Is Onlive Pirating Windows and Will It Cost Them? 225
An anonymous reader writes "When Onlive, the network gaming company, started offering not just Microsoft Windows but Microsoft Office for free on the iPad, and now on Android, it certainly seemed too good to be true. Speculation abounded on what type of license they could be using to accomplish this magical feat. From sifting through Microsoft's licenses and speaking with sources very familiar with them, the ugly truth may be that they can't."
Service Provider License Agreement (Score:5, Informative)
from TFA (Score:5, Informative)
(i know, i know.. i will punish myself later)
i read this as being: onlive is not presently legit but microsoft is playing nice (i.e. squeezing them for every last nickel without involving more than a few lawyers) for now -- until they lose patience (or feel threatened by being beating to market by an upstart.. not once but twice) and bring the sledgehammer down on onlive's entire business model -- windows and office desktop and gaming platform (xbox and windows games, at least)
Re:Service Provider License Agreement (Score:5, Informative)
Re:EC2 (Score:4, Informative)
I agree with you except the issue is Windows 7.. MS offers licences for things like EC2 and SPLA for Server OS and software - but not for Windows 7 desktop OS.. the fact that Onlive provides a Windows 7 interface over a 2008R2 is what is odd and likely to cause them problems.
Re:Service Provider License Agreement (Score:5, Informative)
* Remote Desktop SAL (6WC-00002) @ 3.45 a month
* Office Standard (021-08183) @ $10.30 a month
That is $13.75 a month per user they need to pay Microsoft + all the other costs for hardware, support, etc.
Re:Service Provider License Agreement (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Service Provider License Agreement (Score:5, Informative)
From what I recall, SPLA is not concurrent usage, it's "per account per month".
That's pretty much it. You count up the number of users that used the product over the month and tell Microsoft.
Re:They applied for a site license (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Article is mistaken about Office licenses (Score:3, Informative)
Re:real ugly truth (Score:5, Informative)
Source? According to the Human Rights Council's website [ohchr.org], the US and China are both current members.
Also, although the US has no federal shield laws for journalists, most states do (and I really doubt China has any).
Clearly the US government has committed human-rights abuses, but are you seriously arguing that China has a better record on human rights than the US?
Re:Who shives a git!!! (Score:4, Informative)
Linux printing is easy and has been for some time. Ditto scanning. There are a few unsupported printers, but they're the real cheap pieces of shit.
Re:They applied for a site license (Score:5, Informative)
As an SPLA provider I can confirm there IS a win7 license available under SPLA.
Huh, maybe you should let Joe Matz, VP of Worldwide Licensing and Pricing at Microsoft know, since he says, "However, it is important to note that SPLA does not support delivery of Windows 7 as a hosted client. [technet.com]"
He also mentions, "We are actively engaged with OnLive with the hope of bringing them into a properly licensed scenario, and we are committed to seeing this issue is resolved," which implies that OnLive is not currently properly licensed.
Re:real ugly truth (Score:3, Informative)
Um, we dont have a forced sterilization program here.
You did until about the start of the eighties. The US was actually one of the first countries to adopt forced sterilization programs and kind of kick-started the whole eugenics movement. (Also, you know who else was in favour of eugenics and forced sterilization? Winston Churchill.)