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Windows Licenses in VMs

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by toepfer_c 2 views

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I sent this question to the Windows Virtualization Team and I've posted it a few places to generate some noise. Maybe someone here has some thoughts. If I create a Windows based VM with my license, how do I share it with people so they can use it with their license? This is a big issue in my opinion - it would be great to be able to create Windows based virtual appliances.

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by jmgarvin

Windows has a backwards licensing scheme and needs to fix it...perhaps virtualization will push that, but I highly doubt it.

by toepfer_c

It's an issue with virtual machines in general, but I'm specifically concerned with Windows - whatever the software (VMWare/VPC/Xen/QEMU/Plex86/etc...). There has been some effort on Microsoft's part to ease the situation; Virtual PC itself is free, and you can install up to 4 copies of Vista Enterprise in Vista Enterprise with a single license. Other then that, the same licensing requirements as a physical machine would apply as far as I know. VM's however are reproducible and portable, two of their biggest advantages if you're a home user (on the enterprise side you have dynamic resource allocation). If you lose both those things in Windows because of license restrictions (you can't migrate to another license), how is virtualization at all usable for windows? In other words, if a professional wants to setup distributable OS environments for clients, he MUST choose Linux, BSD, or other open license alternatives.

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