[thomaskcr]

See, even you're a bit confused by MSDN -- You're not even supposed to use the MSDN license for your own everyday use is what I've been told. So if you have outlook for email and you're using an MSDN license, that's not correctly licensed. MSDN is ONLY for development. Also it's one MSDN license per developer apparently.

And no because you still get nailed -- it's not like your reseller is the one being audited, it's you.

You're supposed to get CALs for printers accessing MS servers.

Don't ever use an MS server for DHCP, every single client needs a CAL. How am I supposed to even predict that if we allow personal devices on the guest network?

It's beyond frustrating - and the products are great, they just make it impossible to actually ever be in compliance and you need to spend an insane amount of time just handling licenses. It's really the reason I avoid MS as much as possible, and I really love their dev tools (Visual Studio is beyond awesome, I love C#.net) its just too much hassle.

[MichaelGG]

No I'm not confused - I was giving an example of stuff I've heard from clients. MSDN makes it really clear it's for dev not day-to-day ops. But people don't get that.

I'd be surprised if you get "nailed" if a reseller went over a scenario and licensed you. Worst case is if they can prove maliciousness and fine you. If the reseller calculated things and came to a reasonable (but lower) number I'd be surprised if that's gonna really hurt.

Agreed though that MS's licensing is terribly annoying. But it's a lower Total Cost of Ownership, right?!

[thomaskcr]

Ah sorry, yes I was one of those people -- we had like half an office using MSDN licenses. Just didn't know better (they give us 10, we'll buy another MSDN license when we run out!).