Microsoft is providing businesses with unlicensed software—and the partners supporting them—a new option to purchase Windows XP. Yeah, Windows XP.
It would be so easy to dis Vista, particularly given last week's XP OEM licensing extension, but Microsoft's program makes sense. Windows XP is the right focus.
The new program, GGWA (Get Genuine Windows Agreement), complements another, GGK (Get Genuine Kit), launched in summer 2006. Microsoft channel partners fulfill both programs, which provide businesses a way to get legal copies of Windows XP on PCs that shipped without operating systems or that are loaded with unlicensed software.
"The channel partner serves our mutual customer and continues to be that trusted advisor," Cori Hartje, Microsoft's Genuine Software Initiative director, told me this afternoon.
Microsoft is more concerned about getting business customers legal than chasing them down and branding them as software pirates. Through the GGK program, Microsoft partners provide CD media to businesses, which Hartje said was too much hassle for many IT organizations.
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