Text 6575, 40 rader
Skriven 2005-04-03 01:35:36 av Alan Zisman (1:106/2000.0)
   Kommentar till text 6557 av Gordon Huff (1:106/2000.0)
Ärende: Re: I've Been AOL'd Part
================================
-=> Gordon Huff wrote to TOM WALKER <=-

 GH> AIUI a legitimate Windows license for, say, XP, also makes you
 GH> legitimate for any previous Windows. I read somewhere that machines
 GH> originally shipped with Windows and, say, donated to schools remain
 GH> legitimate even if the software is lost and must be replaced.

I've generally worked on the assumption of backwards-compatible licenses...
i.e. that if you buy a current version of a product, you can use an earlier
version instead.

For instance, in my previous school, sometime around 1997 or so, when I had a
lab full of 386s running Win 3.1, I purchased licenses for the then-current
Visual Basic 5.0. As a Win9x product, it wouldn't run on our Win 3.1 systems
(and would have taken more disk space than most of the hard drives on those
systems). So I installed VB 1.0, which could be installed in under 2 MB of
drive space, and was designed for Win 3.0.

It worked fine for my uses.

But I don't know that this is really legal, if a software company chose to
challenge it.

There is nothing that I'm aware of suggesting that machines donated to schools
'remain legitimate' if there is no documentation of the original Windows
license.

One thing that Microsoft has done right (in my opinion) for schools is that
they have a program called Fresh Start for Education... schools can apply,
noting the number of donated systems they expect to have, and get a license
allowing them to install (their choice of) Win98SE or Win2000. Microsoft sends
a license, and copies of the two OSs... in case you know any interested
schools:

 http://www.microsoft.com/education/freshstart/freshstart.asp

I've got my school license!
... Inet mail to: alan at zisman dot ca
--- MultiMail/Win32 v0.40
 * Origin: COMM Port OS/2 juge.com 204.89.247.1 (281) 980-9671 (1:106/2000)