back to article Microsoft makes Windows Server 2022 licenses a little less cynical

Microsoft has made the terms on which it licenses Windows Server 2022 a little more generous. In early April the OS giant changed the Product Terms Page for Windows Server Standard, Datacenter, and Essentials. The changes appear not to have rated a blog post or other prose publication. Microsoft's terms page, by the way, …

  1. b0llchit Silver badge
    Devil

    Squeezing the process

    I wonder when they will come up with licenses that charge by-the-instruction as to how many clock cycles you are using in your program.

    Then, when you think you managed to have optimized your programs, you will be faced with a memory tax. The first 640k are for free, every next kByte(*) will cost you a relative fortune. Cache memory will be at least twice as expensive.

    When we apply Moore's law to licensing, then we'll see licenses to charge per electron set into motion to optimize license money extraction. Counting the electrons will be, of course, charged to the customer because more electrons were set into motion in the process of accounting for the electron motion(**).

    (*) The courts will have to decide whether that means kilo- or kibi-Bytes after a couple of years of litigation.

    (**) Recursive money machine detected. Party for ultimate wealth accumulation is in preparation.

    1. Roland6 Silver badge

      Re: Squeezing the process

      A couple of years before CoViD MS did apply for a patent that recognised that in the cloud compute (ie. CPU) was separate to memory, disk and comm’s and hence each could be separately and dynamically charged for. Naturally, the patent contained no real details (nor anything that would have been a surprise to anyone who had knowledge of instrumentation tools such as BMC Patrol and Telco billing systems), so I presumed it was intended to obstruct others who wished to actually implement such a level of instrumentation and billing.

      1. Uplink

        Re: Squeezing the process

        Wait... They attempted to patent a billing structure? If such a patent does go through, it may be time to bring out that implement that the French used to make their royals lose a little bit of weight.

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Squeezing the process

      "I wonder when they will come up with licenses that charge by-the-instruction as to how many clock cycles you are using in your program."

      Don't forget to charge extra for branches and exponential charges on the number of times round a loop.

      1. b0llchit Silver badge

        Re: Squeezing the process

        Notice: You are using the byte at address 0x1f0cc0ffbeafcace a bit too often. You will now be charged for memory wear at this address.

      2. LateAgain

        Re: Squeezing the process

        The further the branch the more it costs.

        Will there be a discount for going around the same loop hundreds of times?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    >Linux is, of course, free and open source, and very technically mature thanks

    > to the efforts of the likes of Red Hat, SUSE – and often Microsoft itself.

    ... and to the many, *many* man hours contributed for free by individual developers whilst Microsoft was still calling the entire community a cancer.

    Don't want to forget that bit. You don't want to forget how narrow minded, short sighted and ridiculous machines like Microsoft can be.

    1. chivo243 Silver badge

      Microsoft was still calling the entire community a cancer...

      Well, to be fair, that is attributed to our Comic CEO Ballmer... In recent years, M$ has woken up and has smelled the coffee to a certain degree.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        it wasn't just Ballmer

        it was pre Ballmer as well... and if you think they are really embracing linux then I have some property to sell you

        1. chivo243 Silver badge
          Thumb Up

          Re: it wasn't just Ballmer

          +1 for your historic memory, but I'll pass on the property... I'm not that gullible, geesh. I remember the cancer quote being attributed to Stevie...

        2. Franco Bronze badge

          Re: it wasn't just Ballmer

          They are embracing, at least as much as they are developing versions of their software that they can sell to Linux users. Much the same as Apple "embrace" Windows as a means to give Windows users a gateway to purchase things from iTunes.

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: it wasn't just Ballmer

          You know that Microsoft is one of the largest contributors to Linux & other open source projects, as reported on by The Register a couple of months back:

          https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/24/who_writes_open_source/

          1. Peter Gathercole Silver badge

            Re: it wasn't just Ballmer

            Yes, but one wonders just how much of that work was to get WSL working, and also to get Linux working in an Azure environment better than anywhere else.

            Microsoft are not motivated to be altruistic. Everything will be working to a plan to get leverage over other companies, and especially over something which had the potential to completely pull the rug from under Microsoft's revenue.

            They gave up on trying to make everyone run Windows in the cloud. They're now making it so there are compulsive reasons to run Linux workloads in Azure.

            1. moonpunk

              Re: it wasn't just Ballmer

              Commercial organisation focusses on providing choice to their existing and potential new customers in order to maintain or increase their revenue - shock horror!

    2. Tim99 Silver badge
  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If you're running Server 2022

    You realy need to be running AD, otherwise there's no reason to be running Windows.

    1. Korev Silver badge
      Gimp

      Re: If you're running Server 2022

      For generic servers maybe, but if the software you use only runs on Windows server then you have very little choice (see icon)

      1. Roland6 Silver badge

        Re: If you're running Server 2022

        > if the software you use only runs on Windows server then you have very little choice

        I was pleasantly surprised to discover WS is a supported OS on some Lenovo series of Thinkpads (drivers available in the relevant download pages); okay they only seem to supply Thinkpads with Windows 10/11 (or Linux) pre-installed. Although on a Ryzen 7 Pro 4750U (8 cores/16 threads) Thinkpad, I’ve not encountered issues running it on Windows 10 Hyper-V, which is a more easily supported and transferable configuration.

    2. Roland6 Silver badge

      Re: If you're running Server 2022

      Suspect it is the other way round for many: Have on-prem AD and thus WinServ 2012/2016/2019 and wish to get the full benefit of MS Cloud and have on-prem networking that isn’t totally reliant on MS365 AD being up, you really need WS 2022…

      1. 43300 Silver badge

        Re: If you're running Server 2022

        Worth pointing out that there's been very little change in local AD since Server 2016 - the two subsequent version remain at the same functional level, whereas before there was normally a new functional level to correspond with each release of the server OS (and you had to make sure that you didn't move up a functional level until all your DCs were on the corresponding or newer OS version).

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: If you're running Server 2022

      Haven't they defaulted to using Azure AD for everything yet ;-)

      1. Nick Ryan

        Re: If you're running Server 2022

        Not quite... but we're currently at the sage where if you don't run everything as rented accounts on azure then obscure and intermittent authentication errors crop up.

      2. 43300 Silver badge

        Re: If you're running Server 2022

        Many organisations are running a hybrid AD (local / Azure), which is a right pain in the arse to administer - far worse than either one on their own. Some settings can be changed in either, some in one, some in the others - and for extra fun they've made it so that some things have available options in both but it only actually works in one of them! It's a right mess.

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