They can use 3rd-party scripts or tools to speed up their work, but again - the end result would be something their client could have conceivable done themselves. VAR's act as agents to perform normal work, but cannot modify Windows beyond what a normal user cannot do themselves. The VAR agreement allows them to do things on behalf of the customer, with the presumption that the client has followed the proper licensing terms. Value Added Reseller is a specific role, where a company gets a formal agreement to allow them to pre-configure or setup Windows, on purchased or serviced systems (ie. You cannot redistribute your modified copy, because you're creating a new burden again for MS. If you modify a copy of Windows you downloaded from MS, the burden is no longer on Microsoft to guarantee your safety. Therefore the license agreement says you DO NOT REDISTRIBUTE any images. You're adding doubts about Windows' security. When you redistribute even the exact same ISO, you create a new burden when one didn't exist before. MS wants to guarantee every copy of Windows is authentic, not from a piracy view, but to confirm no bad actions will happen because you didn't use a MS-provided physical or digital copy. I think the reason that distributing ISO is probably also illegal, is because there's no reasonable way for Microsoft to monitor the data and make sure it doesn't violate #2, since someone could heavily tweak Windows and present it in a fashion that Microsoft never intended, which can make the operating system behave in a way that the user or Microsoft dislikes (causing users to contact Microsoft with bugs/problems caused by the tweaks). There was a guy who went to court in 2018 for violating both of those aspects, because he was selling recovery discs (violating #1), and he was counterfitting the packaging, among some other issues (violating #2). I think Garlin is right on, and the only reason I'm adding is because I just so happened to contact Microsoft a few weeks ago to try to get an official yes/no answer about if I could distribute an ISO (free), so long as people still had to activate it with their own, legal license.Īfter a bunch of runaround from multiple tiers of escalation, the end result is that I never got an official answer from Microsoft employees, I did however get their personal opinions which can be summed up as, "If in doubt, don't do it." The best they could do was point me to the legal pages, but some of that stuff is generalized and could be interpreted multiple ways, so I asked to be put in touch with someone from the legal team, and they won't do it.īy time I was done reading their legal pages, talking to employees, and trying to find info on the internet, I think most of the legalese can by summarized in two major aspects:ġ) Are you taking money that belongs to Microsoft? If so, don't do it.Ģ) Are you potentially making Microsoft look bad? If so, don't do it. It seems like this should be alright though, because if there's nothing wrong with modifying system settings post-install, why would it be a problem doing it pre-install? We're distributing, I suppose, just by merely installing it to a customer's machine. So, I don't feel like we're 'distributing' these images - at least not in the sense that we're passing around the ISO. This will save us the post-install steps and a ton of time. It would be really nice to have one Windows image which was already set up the way we do it manually. We've got a certain way we like to set up machines for our customers. After we install Windows, we always go through and 'set it up'. Most of these folks have legitimate Windows license keys and for those who don't, we sell and install license keys(legitimate keys). These folks either had their hard drive upgraded to SSD, or their Windows installation was borked beyond repair. Here's my use case: I own a tech firm and we install Windows hundreds of times a year, usually for residential customers. Most of the confusion is because I I'm reading about distribution and it seems like it comes down to the end user's license situation. Ahoy! I purchased a NTLite license after seeing this tool on a Chris Titus Youtube video - it's amazing! So, I'm a pretty smart fella but I can't seem to discern the legalities of my particular use case.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |