MSDN license to production license

I have searched through the MSDN subscriber content and have been able to
find a contact or document that talks specifically about the situation I hav
e
noted below.  If someone could give a tip it would be greatly appreciated.

We have been developing a system under MSDN licensing, Win2k, SQL 2k,
Office, etc., and have come up on our delivery date.  We have also made a
terrible mistake by not reminding our customer that they need to get on the
ball with ordering their production licenses.  Would it be legally acceptabl
e
to purchase production licenses for all of our software and not have to
reinstall everything?  I do not think that it is possible to apply new
product keys?!?  This purchase would take place before the system went
'online'.

Thanks.  Any information would be greatly appreciated.

--
Thanks,
Charlie

If you're in the U.S. you need to call 1-800-426-9400 with this type of
licensing question. Elsewhere, contact the regional Microsoft Sales office.

I have asked about this type of situation myself in the past. The answer
might be different today, but I was told that you must reinstall from
production media in order to be fully and officially compliant, even if
there is no real difference in the actual software except for PIDs and keys.

Unfortunately, the 3 products you list can be awkward to re-install, and the
licensing people seldom realize all the technical details. For example, if
you've updated Win2K with IE 6, re-installing (even from slipstreamed SP4
media) will result in a broken hybrid of IE/OE 5 and IE/OE 6 which requires
registry hacking to fix. Re-installing SQL2K after applying SP3a requires
special procedures to deal with the fact that your user databases are in a
newer format than the RTM engine will recognize, to deal with objects in
master other than sysdatabases that you may need to preserve like logins,
and to rebuild any full-text indexes. Depending upon the version of Office
you're talking about, upon how it was first installed, and upon how you
re-install it, re-installing may result in MSI anomalies like components
which were selected in a transform file being uninstalled (the infamous
"missing shortcuts" problem), Office Web Component license detection issues,
versioning issues with certain shared DLLs (especially the Triedit
component), and conflicts with Extended MAPI.

I am not a lawyer and I do not speak for Microsoft, but in my opinion, as
long as you acquire all the proper licenses before going live in production
and as long as you are not using the Developer Edition of SQL2K, there is
realistically no chance that Microsoft would give you a hard time. Even if
you were audited, a real-world audit would simply match licenses purchased
to licenses used. Even if you had a PSS incident in the future where the PSS
engineer realized you installed from MSDN, those people are too busy to
worry about trivial license technicalities.


"charlie" <charlie@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:3A353005-3C3D-42FA-8BA5-841DBCE22351@microsoft.com...
> We have been developing a system under MSDN licensing, Win2k, SQL 2k,
> Office, etc., and have come up on our delivery date.  We have also made a
> terrible mistake by not reminding our customer that they need to get on
> the
> ball with ordering their production licenses.  Would it be legally
> acceptable
> to purchase production licenses for all of our software and not have to
> reinstall everything?  I do not think that it is possible to apply new
> product keys?!?  This purchase would take place before the system went
> 'online'.

Ronny, thanks for the tips.  I appreciate it.

I am honestly not that worried.  I just have to let the customer know what
type of situation they are in and what their options are.


"Ronny Ong" wrote:

> If you're in the U.S. you need to call 1-800-426-9400 with this type of
> licensing question. Elsewhere, contact the regional Microsoft Sales office
.
>
> I have asked about this type of situation myself in the past. The answer
> might be different today, but I was told that you must reinstall from
> production media in order to be fully and officially compliant, even if
> there is no real difference in the actual software except for PIDs and key
s.
>
> Unfortunately, the 3 products you list can be awkward to re-install, and t
he
> licensing people seldom realize all the technical details. For example, if
> you've updated Win2K with IE 6, re-installing (even from slipstreamed SP4
> media) will result in a broken hybrid of IE/OE 5 and IE/OE 6 which require
s
> registry hacking to fix. Re-installing SQL2K after applying SP3a requires
> special procedures to deal with the fact that your user databases are in a
> newer format than the RTM engine will recognize, to deal with objects in
> master other than sysdatabases that you may need to preserve like logins,
> and to rebuild any full-text indexes. Depending upon the version of Office
> you're talking about, upon how it was first installed, and upon how you
> re-install it, re-installing may result in MSI anomalies like components
> which were selected in a transform file being uninstalled (the infamous
> "missing shortcuts" problem), Office Web Component license detection issue
s,
> versioning issues with certain shared DLLs (especially the Triedit
> component), and conflicts with Extended MAPI.
>
> I am not a lawyer and I do not speak for Microsoft, but in my opinion, as
> long as you acquire all the proper licenses before going live in productio
n
> and as long as you are not using the Developer Edition of SQL2K, there is
> realistically no chance that Microsoft would give you a hard time. Even if
> you were audited, a real-world audit would simply match licenses purchased
> to licenses used. Even if you had a PSS incident in the future where the P
SS
> engineer realized you installed from MSDN, those people are too busy to
> worry about trivial license technicalities.
>
>
> "charlie" <charlie@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:3A353005-3C3D-42FA-8BA5-841DBCE22351@microsoft.com... 
>
>
>

I think so long as you own the product you've got installed, you're OK.
That's just my take on it all - MS has a licensing phone number that might
be worth calling.

--
--
Brian Desmond
Windows Server MVP
desmondb@payton.cps.k12.il.us

Http://www.briandesmond.com


"charlie" <charlie@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:3A353005-3C3D-42FA-8BA5-841DBCE22351@microsoft.com...
> I have searched through the MSDN subscriber content and have been able to
> find a contact or document that talks specifically about the situation I
have
> noted below.  If someone could give a tip it would be greatly appreciated.
>
> We have been developing a system under MSDN licensing, Win2k, SQL 2k,
> Office, etc., and have come up on our delivery date.  We have also made a
> terrible mistake by not reminding our customer that they need to get on
the
> ball with ordering their production licenses.  Would it be legally
acceptable
> to purchase production licenses for all of our software and not have to
> reinstall everything?  I do not think that it is possible to apply new
> product keys?!?  This purchase would take place before the system went
> 'online'.
>
> Thanks.  Any information would be greatly appreciated.
>
> --
> Thanks,
> Charlie