Over the past couple of months, we've been covering OnLive's efforts to bring remote virtualization of Windows applications to the iPad, offering access to Microsoft Office, Adobe Reader, and Flash-enabled web browsing through Windows 7. OnLive may, however, be running into some difficulties with Microsoft over its offerings, with ZDNet pointing to a Microsoft blog post discussing licensing arrangements for remote desktop streaming and its belief that OnLive is not meeting these requirements.
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Companies are permitted to offer some "desktop-like functionality" to users via remote hosting, but Windows 7 itself and Office provided through a hosted Windows 7 installation are specifically excluded. An alternative method allowing for full remote hosting would require that the end user hold a license with Microsoft for the software and that the remote hardware used to host the Windows installation be dedicated to that specific customer. OnLive's services certainly do not seem to meet either of these paths to compliance, and Microsoft notes that it is "committed to seeing this issue is resolved."
Some inquiries about these scenarios have been raised as a result of recent media coverage related to OnLive’s Desktop and Desktop Plus services. Additionally, the analyst firm Gartner raised questions regarding the compliance of these services last week. We are actively engaged with OnLive with the hope of bringing them into a properly licensed scenario, and we are committed to seeing this issue is resolved.
OnLive has apparently yet to issue any public statements on the situation.
Top Rated Comments
I don't know of ANY commercial software vendor who would allow a product sold with an end-user license to be provided to an arbitrary number of other users like this without any profit going back to the vendor. From a financial point of view that would be no different than buying a single copy of Windows 7 and then making the ISO available for download on your website for a fee, since you're now providing it to other users without MS seeing any of the profit. Any commercial software vendor would object to that. In this case, judging by their blog post, MS isn't trying to shut down OnLive, they just want them to buy the appropriate licenses that MS sells specifically for companies who want to provide a service like OnLive.
Bitchplease. If this was Apple instead of Microsoft they'd be suing onlive's ass off.
And you'd be cheering them on.
Apple has become the king of giant corporation suing machines.
The iPad is amazing at running RDP - If you need to run windows only software (yeah, sounds absurd right?) like people in the medical field, the iPad can be your vehicle to run that software even though it is windows based. I gather you don't get out much into the real world of computing by your comment.