THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS "DIVA"

Lately there's been a fair amount of questions about this scenerio:

http://blogs.msdn.com/mssmallbiz/archive/2008/10/15/9000514.aspx

If I downgrade SBS 2008 to SBS 2003, can I keep the premium licensing of the second server/Windows 2008 and deploy that with a downgrade right SBS 2003.

Quite frankly I agree with the licensing stance here.  We're buying a suite.  We've downgraded "the suite".  We don't get the rights to the parts, there is no prior version that we've ever had that has allowed us to be licensed for the parts.  There's no mix and match that we have the right to assume we get. 

Take SBS 2000.  If we opted for downgrade rights to SBS 4.5 we didn't get the right to run ISA 2000.

Take SBS 2003.  If we opted for downgrade rights to SBS 2000 we didn't get the right to run Exchange 2000 on the NT box.  We bought a licensing suite.

It's no different in this era.  We're buying SBS 2008 premium suite.  We're not buying SBS 2008 + Windows 2008 + SQL 2008.  We're signing on to the licensing eula that it includes as well.

Sometimes I think we forget that we're buying a suite.  We also forget that SBS is a team inside a large company.  It's easy for us to sit back and demand "it's easy to make that change".  We're not on the inside.  We're not dealing with the lawyers.  We're not dealing with intellectual property right issues.  We're not trying to minimize issues with the Department of Justice and the EU.  We are out here.  Not in there. 

And sometimes we need to remember that.

It's one thing to ask.  It's another thing to expect it as a right when we've never had the history of this before.