Microsoft to clarify its licensing terms

Microsoft is to group its products into separate categories based on how they are priced and what rights are offered, in an effort to make its complex product-licensing terms a bit more clear, the company has said.

The move, effective from 1 July, is part of Microsoft's regular update of its licensing program. The software maker said it is not changing the licensing terms associated with any of its software, but instead is trying to make those terms more understandable to customers.

Sunny Charlebois, a product manager in Microsoft's worldwide licensing and pricing unit, said: "What customers told us is they are really confused." Charlebois said Microsoft's previous outline of various products and their usage rules was more than 100 pages. "It was legalise; it was very difficult to understand."

By grouping all of its 70 or so products into nine categories, Microsoft expects that it can cut the length of the "product use rights" treatise in half. Some software, for example, is licensed per server, while other programs are licensed per server processor. Still others require a fee for each desktop that connects, a so-called client access licence (CAL).

With the new effort, Microsoft is grouping its products based on these categories and will also aim to put future products into one of the nine areas rather than create new categories. But even with the latest move, Microsoft said it still has a long way to go before things could be characterised as simple.

"Yes, we have a lot of work to do," Charlebois said.

Microsoft makes minor changes to its licensing program on a quarterly basis. Last September, for example, the company made permanent a program that allows customers to upgrade their software licence from standard-edition status to enterprise-edition status without having to buy a completely new licence for that product. In December, it launched a product use rights web page, making information that had been only available in a copy-protected document more easily accessible.

Ina Fried writes for CNET News.com