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Microsoft Screws Azure Customers and Its Own Advocates Alike

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Re: Microsoft Screws Azure Customers and Its Own Advocates Alike

#21

Post by iforgotpassword »

Traster wrote: post #7

Well this article doesn't seem very good. Not least because the author seems perfectly willing to not actually explain the detail, and then jump to conclusions. Having read the actual detailed article what seems to be happening is that some customers buy "on-premises licenses" without mobility rights, and MSFT used to let them use those licenses on outsourced hardware. But people were using those licenses to just put…

I kinda agree, but then again why even make a difference between those two things? I get how you want to differentiate between home and business use, but this...

Also as they pretty much turned a blind eye on this practice for years now they just created the perception that it is fine and legal. I absolutely can't blame people for getting mad at them changing their minds now. Either have a clear stance on it right from the start or deal with the backlash. That is, we still have to wait and see if/how much there'll actually be...

Slightly related to this: it was quite remarkable how long it took Microsoft to understand and accept that one OS install doesn't equal one (physical) machine. Even back in the old days when you just wanted to have a master hdd image to clone to all your workstations there was no official way to do this. Third party tools did voodoo black magic after dumping the image to the hdd. So it's not that surprising it took them so long to react here... Dynamically spinning up as many identical Linux VMS as you want and have them execute some container? Maybe network boot them? Crazy talk in Windows land for a long time.

Re: Microsoft Screws Azure Customers and Its Own Advocates Alike

#22

Post by wayneftw »

jxcole wrote: post #2

It's pretty hard to get upset about this since nobody actually runs Windows Server on the Cloud anyway. Even Azure is dominated by Linux server usage.

> since nobody actually runs Windows Server on the Cloud anyway.

And how did you actually come to that conclusion?

Re: Microsoft Screws Azure Customers and Its Own Advocates Alike

#25

Post by xeromal »

jxcole wrote: post #2

It's pretty hard to get upset about this since nobody actually runs Windows Server on the Cloud anyway. Even Azure is dominated by Linux server usage.

I'd say most uses of Windows Server would be to host SQL Server which is a hard stop for many enterprise firms.

Re: Microsoft Screws Azure Customers and Its Own Advocates Alike

#26

Post by Clubber »

Someone1234 wrote: post #19
belltaco wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The change also applies only to the big four cloud providers: Microsoft, Alibaba, Amazon and Google. Any other cloud hosting provider, say Rackspace, can be used with on-premise licenses.

That makes it even more anti-competitive, since it makes it readily apparent that they're leveraging one area (Server Licensing) to artificially stimulate another (Enterprise Cloud vis-a-vis Azure Vs. Azure). Hopefully the US Government doesn't deem Windows Server a monopoly or they're in deep trouble.

I wouldn't think Windows Server is anywhere close to a monopoly, unless you define it narrowly, like Windows Server is a monopoly for Exchange installs or something like that.

Re: Microsoft Screws Azure Customers and Its Own Advocates Alike

#27

Post by grezql »

whoisjuan wrote: post #11
jxcole wrote: post #2

It's pretty hard to get upset about this since nobody actually runs Windows Server on the Cloud anyway. Even Azure is dominated by Linux server usage.

"Nobody runs Windows Server on the Cloud" is a massive stretch. It may not be a leader but it's definitely used https://www.datanyze.com/market-share/operating-systems/wind... Also if your stack is .NET you definitely need Windows Server. Even Amazon has some things built on .NET/Windows Server (woot.com)

.net core, which the flagship of the future, is cross platform.

I am running it in ubuntu production environment for an App i made. Very stable.

Re: Microsoft Screws Azure Customers and Its Own Advocates Alike

#28

Post by lurker458 »

belltaco wrote: post #18
Someone1234 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to think simply re-stating the facts is enough to dismiss the article. But you forgot to tell us WHY it is acceptable for Microsoft to charge their customers a premium for using their fully purchased licenses on a cloud provider of their choice rather than dedicated physical hardware. And why it is ok for Microsoft to create an artificial monopoly for these licenses via Azure Dedicated Host. Microsoft sold l…

Why is it okay for Nvidia to disable parts of a fully working chip in order to sell it as a more popular and cheaper part? Why is it okay for them to disable features in the PC vs Workstation drivers on the same hardware that you bought? Why is it okay for Apple to legally restrict OS X from running inside a VM or on a PC? Welcome to price differentiation.

applying price differentiation on a product that you already sold to double dip is pretty scummy

Re: Microsoft Screws Azure Customers and Its Own Advocates Alike

#29

Post by imglorp »

drummyfish wrote: post #16

> the bad old days of Microsoft being an anti-competitive bully are dead and buried. Wait, there are people who genuinely believe this?

Plenty of us still have CALS-mares. The Man will use license terms to control what you deploy and where and how - it's more than just a purchase of a Thing that you can use because it comes with FUTURE terms that can change, forever. See also weekend thread on Cisco locking users out of their own hardware.

This is why there is Free software -- free as in choice, not free as in beer -- so users don't get locked in or forced into something other than a simple purchase.

Re: Microsoft Screws Azure Customers and Its Own Advocates Alike

#30

Post by toomuchtodo »

Someone1234 wrote: post #13
Traster wrote: post #7

Well this article doesn't seem very good. Not least because the author seems perfectly willing to not actually explain the detail, and then jump to conclusions. Having read the actual detailed article what seems to be happening is that some customers buy "on-premises licenses" without mobility rights, and MSFT used to let them use those licenses on outsourced hardware. But people were using those licenses to just put…

You seem to think simply re-stating the facts is enough to dismiss the article. But you forgot to tell us WHY it is acceptable for Microsoft to charge their customers a premium for using their fully purchased licenses on a cloud provider of their choice rather than dedicated physical hardware. And why it is ok for Microsoft to create an artificial monopoly for these licenses via Azure Dedicated Host. Microsoft sold l…

> But you forgot to tell us WHY it is acceptable for Microsoft to charge their customers a premium for using their fully purchased licenses on a cloud provider of their choice rather than dedicated physical hardware. And why it is ok for Microsoft to create an artificial monopoly for these licenses via Azure Dedicated Host.

Because they wrote and own the software you are interested in licensing. If you don't like the license, don't run the software.

Microsoft has the leverage that open source projects like Redis and Elastic wish they had on AWS (and why those open source projects are updating their licenses to combat AWS' profiting off of their work).

As someone else has mentioned, Apple restricts how and where you can run OSX/MacOS. I don't think thats going to stop people from using OSX/MacOS out of principle (typo corrected).

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