Byzantine pricing: Machiavellian schemes.
The Microsoft (MS) pricing structure for its products has become so elaborate that soon individuals and enterprise will need to hire independent consultants to arrange the best deal.
No wonder some businesses fall foul of licence infringement, this arising from confusion alone. The complexity encourages one or other of two strategies.
First, pay through the nose for the full caboodle, even though much may never be used, rather than deploy company executives to debate how many MS licences fit on the head of a pin.
Second, use workarounds without much caring whether the strict MS nitpicking regimen is followed to the letter. MS snoops cannot be everywhere, particularly outside the USA. In other words contribute what one thinks the product is worth to one's business. Private individuals for the time being can fairly easily resort to 'pirated' copies.
When the goal of getting everyone connected to the MS cloud is reached, the company shall have total control over a captive customer base. Also, having licence keys inscribed on chips in PCs will almost eradicate 'piracy'.
Ironically, although it may be argued that digitally represented software and other 'content' lacks intrinsic monetary value because being reproducible without limit it has no scarcity (other than that artificially created by anachronistic copyright law), under an exclusively cloud-based mode of operation MS can legitimately be said to be offering a tangible service i.e. added-value to monetarily worthless streams of digits.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
