Whether or not that "loophole" is legal is debatable. Just because
a reseller will give you an OEM license with a CD-ROM drive or audio cable
doesn't mean they haven't take artistic liberties in their interpretation of
their agreement with Microsoft and/or the OEM license. However, assuming it
is legal, said CD-ROM drive or audio cable would have to be installed in the
machine the license is being used on in order to meet the conditions of the
"loophole." Seeing as how a virtual machine technically has no hardware,
unless it is also legal to consider the host's hardware applicable to the
OEM license, this "loophole" still wouldn't be effective. That said, it
would allow for the purchase of volume licensing for the virtual machine on
the hardware that had the OEM license once the OEM license was obtained, but
at that point, the cost is probably going to be greater than the initial
retail license (unless you are to have several Windows VMs on one machine,
but even then the volume licensing might require an OEM license per volume
license), and you are still keeping track of individual OEM licenses and
their keys the same way you are with the retail ones, only then that
tracking is in addition to the volume licensing.
Dustin
-----Original Message-----
From: xen-users-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:xen-users-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Ben Holt
Sent: Wednesday, February 17, 2010 16:44
Cc: xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [Xen-users] How do I get Windows licenses for virtual machines?
Anthony Wright said the following:
>
> Next I looked at the various licenses for Windows 7, the first being the
> OEM license. Unfortunately you can only get an OEM license with new
> hardware, you can't buy an OEM license for hardware that you've already
> bought.
>
It's been a while since I bought a software license, but the last time I
did it was for an OEM copy of XP. I don't know if the loop hole is
still open, but the only hardware I had to buy was a CD audio cable,
which I think came to $1 or something silly like that.
- Ben
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