[runarb]

Dos anybody knows if AWS has some special arrangement with Microsoft? For example do they collect licensing fees on behalf of Microsoft when you run the WM and thereby are except from the normal licensing rules?

Or can I also make public available Windows WM images and publish them legally from my website?

[ebrescia]

Yes, they have a special arrangement with Microsoft. That is why you will see that it is more expensive to run Windows-based instances on AWS than it is to run the free Linux OSs (Amazon Linux and Ubuntu, for example.) You can put together and publish your own AMIs for Amazon based on Windows, but users can't download and use them (as with all AMIs) - they just deploy them to Amazon and then they would be paying the additional hourly fees.