I came across this really interesting piece from Zdnet.com about a company called Discount-Licensing.com that has continued to sell second hand software, after Microsoft attempted to squash them. They apparently found a loophole within Microsoft’s licensing agreements and are able to offer a variety of Microsoft products.
Although Microsoft made a change in October 2007, software licenses with the previous terms (disused licenses purchased before October 2007) can still be sold by the company.
Microsoft has yet to respond to the article, which tells me that they cannot and this company will be able to go on doing what they are doing. There could be a great potential here for companies that have organizational changes or bankruptcy and need to offload their unused licenses; same goes for small businesses who need licensing, but don’t want to go through the process of purchasing them directly from the software vendors.
I wonder how many other companies out there are doing this sort of thing and how long 20 of them will pop-up finding more and more loop holes for reselling licensing.
Very interesting to see what develops here!