I've often wondered, I have an MSDN universal license, and a technet license, so I have all the licenses I need to do what I need, which is software development.
If I was a dishonest person, and simply gave a license key for say an enterprise version of SQL server, to someone (or worse charged them for it), and they used it in a production environment, how does Microsoft catch people?
In the old days, when most software that was installed on a desktop, it was always pretty obvious when a company bought one copy of a piece of software and installed it on the desktops of 500-1000 or more people (I worked at a company like that. Ultimately, someone ratted them out and the software police came and handed down a big fine…)
If a dishonest company installs a illegal copy of server software and 1000 or more people use it, there would be no way anyone except the sysadmin would know…I have to believe MS has a way of dealing with this…but how?
Best Answer
I think this article pretty much covers all of your questions:
http://www.aaxnet.com/topics/slicense.html
I was once working with a client who contacted Microsoft to ask what it would take to become "compliant" and fully licensed.
By the time the (several) conversations were over, they opted to switch everything they could over to Linux.
It was quite the undertaking but when it was all done it easily saved them money.
I'm not bashing Microsoft here, I actually like several of their products and even recommend them (best tool for the job, etc). It just seems that the bigger or more complex the business is... the harder it is for the business to stay licensed, in compliance, and safe.
Open source is turning out to be a very good way of avoiding the most common issues such as too many copies of Microsoft Office, too many web servers, a SQL server that's set up as a SaaS (Software as a Service) provider, etc, etc.
Just my 2 cents. Hope the link above sheds more light on it for you.