DataDrake Oh that. Yes. But that's only the people who work for the beast. This is a little OT but well... until Nadella took over, their products were (obviously) never built to be actually used for anything productive. They were built so they would have to be constantly and heavily supported - by the very people who, for that reason, went out and sold them.
The real blood-sucking happens in the larger hosts that have to use volume licensing. Those license agreements are carefully crafted legal bombs that can be used to extort money and have gag orders and further license agreements signed. It's basically impossible to get the licensing correct in larger volumes. "Correct" in that context means you get a (very expensive) piece of paper from KPMG that promises you freedom of legal worries for one year.
As CIOs started to dare with alternatives and this system started to show signs of decay, Ballmer was replaced with Nadella, who cleverly started to invest into real products. So are they still the same? I don't know. But I want no dealings with them.
