Microsoft has a bit of advice for people using the Windows 7 operating system introduced earlier this month: Follow the law. In a blog posting at the Microsoft SMB Community Blog, Eric Ligman of the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Group wrote that a number of blogs and postings are offering hacks that enable the use of a less-expensive upgrade disk for a new Windows 7 installation.
This, Ligman wrote, is against the end-user license agreement to which people buying products agree. “Of course, from the posts I saw, they often forgot to mention a very basic, yet very important piece of information … ‘Technically possible’ does not always mean legal,” Ligman wrote.
The post goes on to explain in great detail what is legal and what is not. An upgrade license presupposes ownership of a qualifying license from which to upgrade from. Using an upgrade license for a fresh install simply is against the law, Ligman wrote.
Not a New Problem
“To me, this is pretty straightforward,” said Michael Cherry, Directions on Microsoft’s vice president of research for operating systems. “It is not enough to find a way to install Windows onto a computer. To use the software you have to have the proper license. You can look at the Mac OS and Linux in the same way. You have to decide to agree with whatever the licensing conditions are on the software.”
The desire to cut corners isn’t new for Microsoft customers, who tend to feel that the operating system is fair game.
“The problem is that they live in two worlds,” said David Perry, global director of education for Trend Micro. “They have their big profit venture built into the cost of a computer, and they also sell into the consumer market. People believe they paid for [the software] when they paid for their computer….