Licensing Changes to Windows Vista

section: windows, for your questions: KezNews forum, 16.10.2006

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I'm here to tell you that virtually everything you've read online about the changes to Windows Vista's end-user license agreement (EULA) is wrong.

Microsoft is further limiting your rights to transfer Windows to new PCs? Wrong. Microsoft is limiting your ability to upgrade your PC? Wrong. Microsoft is limiting the Vista versions you can install in virtual machines? Well, that one is partially correct. But there's a reason. Here's what's really happening.

Every version of Windows is accompanied by a EULA. This document is a contract that specifies your rights with regards to the copy of Windows you just obtained. The thing is, most people--over 90 percent--get Windows with a new PC, according to Microsoft. And their rights are substantially different from the rights of a customer who purchased Windows at retail. More specifically, versions of Windows that come with a new PC can't ever be transferred to another PC. They are, quite literally, bound to the PCs with which they were purchased. Retail copies of Windows... that's a bit different. But only a bit. We'll get to that.

What's happened is that Microsoft has clarified the EULA for Windows Vista. They've made it more readable, for starters, so normal people can get by the legalese and understand what the document really means. The Vista EULA is also clearer about certain things, including one of the supposedly controversial "changes" that the previously named online pundits are railing against. It also mentions virtualization licensing rights for the first time.

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