The licensing requirements for Windows Vista seem to me to be quite awkward for web and software developers on a budget - particularly for those who don't actually want to run the operating system as their development platform.
As with XP, the OEM license for Vista (which is the relatively affordable type you buy with a new PC, or from a PC wholesaler) will only allow one transfer of the license from one machine to another. Perhaps this isn't too bad if you use Vista as your main Operating System.
But the only Vista licenses which will entitle you to run Vista under virtualisation (running Windows as a "guest operating system" on Linux, for example), are the Business or Ultimate versions. What about multiple installations, or re-installation? Does the OEM license regard these as the same as a transfer? Under virtualisation, the guest operating may get installed afresh several times. It's also useful to be able to run several instances of the same operating system at once.
According to Shannan Boettcher, a general manager in Microsoft's Windows Vista unit:
"Virtualization is a new technology ... We are going to learn more about the use cases as we move forward."
Hmmm... it's not exactly "new technology". Lots of very big players have been using it for several years now.
The Vista Business EULA says these things on virtualisation and software transfer:
"Use with Virtualization Technologies. You may use the software installed on the licensed device within a virtual (or otherwise emulated) hardware system. If you do so, you may not play or access content or use applications protected by any Microsoft digital, information or enterprise rights management technology or other Microsoft rights management services or use BitLocker."
...
"Reassign to another device. ... You may uninstall the software and install it on another device for your use. You may not do so to share this license between devices."
Firstly, the restriction on "rights management content and software" seems bad. Why should additional restrictions be placed on software running under virtualisation? Internet Explorer 7 is itself now covered by the Windows Genuine Advantage system. Is that digital rights management? Might IE7 become unlawful to run under virtualisation?
But I'm also nervous about the issue of transfer between devices. The license seems to define two partitions on a single hard-drive as two seperate devices. So I guess that means if you have several Vista virtual machines running, you'd need their file systems to be contained on a single hard drive partition? I can't find any references in the EULA to running multiple instances of Vista on the same machine - so at first I'd think that this is OK. But the license also says that Vista will "phone home" periodically, require re-validation or even modify the validation process. What will happen if two running instances of Vista try to validate at the same time from my machine? What happens if the validation process introduces new restrictions that mean software I bought for a specific purpose in good faith becomes useless to me?
All in all, this seems a huge headache and expense. I need to test my websites in Internet Explorer and other windows browsers, and would ideally like to have access to native Windows environments to do this in. I'd also like to operate within the law.
It seems my best bet would be to buy a full version of Vista Business or Ultimate for around £350 (ouch!) but even then I'm likely to face restrictions and blocks - and might perhaps inadvertantly invalidate my copy because the License is so darned hard to understand. No wonder web developers get religious about Firefox!
Some relevent links: