99% of people running W8 in HYPER V are breaking the law

Hi there
Looking up the licenses for Windows 8 -- what a minefield -- Ms should really sort this out.

It appears that if you use W8 as a VM in HYPER-V you need a separate license !!! but if you use W7 or XP as the VM you can have as before up to 4 separate virtual images on the one license (provided they are identical).

So it would appear most people on these Forums testing W8 as a VM in HYPER-V are breaking the law here.

Chapter and Verse here

Pica Communications Con, Solving the Microsoft Licensing Puzzle

In fact even if you have a (Non Hyper-V) W8 as a VM running under a different HOST OS say W7 it would be illegal to move that image to another machine -- which would hose me up royally as I often use a Virtual machine image on say a USB stick or HDD for testing etc when I'm elsewhere or want to see if the VM will run on a different physical machine when testing.

Ms should allow some simple developer licenses -- we aren't all Enterprise Customers with 100,000's of dollars to spend -- and often the result of individuals tinkering around in the end can bring MORE money to MS as they find uses for windows that Ms would never have thought of.

Now I'm sure Ms isn't going to send the lawyers around to every person testing HYPER-V to see if they are running a W8 VM on it - but Ms really should get its act together over the whole issue of Virtual Machines.

Cheers
jimbo

MS seem to be excelling themselves in trying to find as many ways as they possibly can to alienate their customers.
Way to go, Microsoft. NOT!
Wenda.

It is a little misleading to say that Hyper V cannot be used to test Windows 8 on a physical Windows 8 installation - it is just not legal to test the identical licensed copy - it is perfectly acceptable to say, install an Evaluation Enterprise edition as a VM (and possibly more than one) on a Windows Pro Physical machine , or to virtualise any other valid retail licensed version of Windows 8, as well as other Licensed copies of Windows. If you are a Subscriber to Technet, or MSDN you are provided with multiple product keys (MAK) for your various Microsoft software products for this and other similar purposes.

In fact this is exactly what MS wants to do - to get users to purchase the right licenses for their needs, and not circumvent their license rules, which would increase their costs and thus increase charges to users.

It is also not there to prevent the curious from seeing what they can get away with! Microsoft requires those who will bend the rules to harden their anti-piracy measures - there are many forums (not this one -God forbid!) with less than angelic motives that Microsoft could close down, but obviously monitor closely to see what exploits are afoot.

Hi there
a big problem is that there ARE NO "CLASSICAL BOXED" RETAIL versions of W8 so where do you get these from. You can't get another upgrade after you've downloaded your upgrade for the machine you are upgrading.

You can download an evaluation copy of W8 to test as a VM but I can't see where you'd say get a second copy of W8 PRO from if you wanted to test this as a VM.

W7 and earlier was no problem --you could buy as many retail copies as you wanted to. That option doesn't seem available in W8.

Cheers
jimbo

I was just wondering...

If you, for instance, get the Media Center pack then you insert a new key for the feature. You use this as your host OS.

Are we allowed to use the old/initial (PRO) key in a VM or not? (On the same computer, to ease things out).

Thanks.

Hopachi

If there are no 'classic' boxed retail Pro editions available, there is no point in trying to make VMs of them.

All there is available to retail are upgrades from Previous versions, upgrades from core version and system builder/personal OEM core and Pro versions. Then there are MSDN and TechNet versions of all flavours, and Enterprise.

If you have upgraded a license, you have no rights to use it elsewhere.

fafhrd said:

If there are no 'classic' boxed retail Pro editions available, there is no point in trying to make VMs of them.

All there is available to retail are upgrades from Previous versions, upgrades from core version and system builder/personal OEM core and Pro versions. Then there are MSDN and TechNet versions of all flavours, and Enterprise.

If you have upgraded a license, you have no rights to use it elsewhere.

Click to expand...

That retail-thing whether or not applicable was confusing to me. I compared it to Win7 keys but yes it seems things have changed.
We need new licenses: That was already mentioned in Jimbo's first post.

Thanks for the clear answer.

PS: After all this, new licenses, even for VM's, and also that the price of W8 will go way up since February are some new moves from MS.

I installed windows 8 pro upgrade in a hyper-v vm on another upgrade of 8 pro. I purchased they keys separately and both were upgraded from windows 7 that I no longer use. I had to do a fresh install in hyper-v because the install wizard doesn't allow you to download in a vm.

Am I breaking the law? Windows 8 activated without problem.