I was surprised to read this article and to be honest a bit shocked. The article was outlining how you could install Vista Upgrade on any PC because Vista will accept an un-activated copy of Vista as validation for the install! The article links to the process which is outlined by a Microsoft MVP! Surely this is a MAJOR oversight by Microsoft??!! I don’t even know if the EULA prohibits this or not?
Posted
by vijay on Monday, February 12th, 2007
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February 13th, 2007 at 12:41 am
One day, everyone will use legally licensed software - until then there will be people who break the rules. Over time all companies will close each loopwhole as they are found- providing it does not cause more harm than good.
Is this a great thing for a MVP to post - not in my opinion, however they are independent of Microsoft, so that is their choice.
The technical possibility and legal ability are still too far apart and yet, people do not want that gap closed - in case it ever catches them out
February 13th, 2007 at 3:31 am
First, there’s a big difference between something being possible and it being permitted by the EULA. There was one version of Office (I think it was Office XP) that would accept its own installation disk as proof of a prior version for upgrade purposes, but that didn’t make it legal.
I don’t think the “you must start from an already-installed OS” requirement is about checking the legitimacy of an upgrade. I suspect it has more to do with preserving OEM revenue streams from preinstalled Office 2007 images. I haven’t properly thought it through yet - but I think that Microsoft wants to ensure that we re-image from the OEM’s recovery disks in preference to nuke-and-pave.
February 13th, 2007 at 4:42 am
Get Windows Vista for Free…
I have a great idea for how you can get a free copy of Windows Vista. Just visit your nearest branch…
February 13th, 2007 at 10:44 am
The message with Vista that we were getting is that it will be increasingly difficult to run versions which you’re not meant to. So this process (which doesn’t involve any hacking) seems to undo that hard work! Why delay activating until after the install or why not do a check to see that you’re not installing on an un-activated Vista version?
The other question I have is, does this specifically break the EULA? If the EULA doesn’t cover this scenario then people may legitimately do this and so ethics does not come in to it! Can we go to a customer and say, well you shouldn’t have done that because it breaks the license terms?