-9

The moderators have closed the question as duplicate. But the link which they have cited does not address the questions which I have asked. Moreover, the 2 responses to my question which the moderators are telling as excellent, are contradicting each other!

1
  • 5
    That the 2 answers to your question (apparently) contradict each other shows how tricky licensing is - best get the answers to your questions in 'writing' from some $entity that has authority to do so. Then you can point at it and say we did as advised by $entity which sounds much better then we asked on a $random internet site ...
    – user9517
    Jun 11, 2013 at 17:37

1 Answer 1

12

Large portions of your question are off-topic for Server Fault - questions about licensing are explicitly specified as off-topic because they involve complex legal issues that are organization-specific, and need to be worked out with the software vendor.

Points 2 and 4 of your question fall afoul of this rule: These are questions you must ask your Microsoft licensing representative (or if your organization does not have one, contact Microsoft support and they'll put you in touch with someone).

This sort of question falls into the category of "If we give you bad advice nothing happens to us, but Microsoft may sic their lawyers on you, and your company may not survive", which is why we don't answer them (and why I have marked your question as a duplicate of the Canonical Licensing Question).


Points 1 and 3 of your question should also be addressed to Microsoft since their procedure for handling downgrades is closely coupled with licensing, but as they've been stable for the last 2-3 years the answers Longneck and Travis provided cover the technical aspects pretty thoroughly (I specifically waited for at least one of those to pop up before closing the question because this may be useful to others as well).

Both answers seem complete and correct to me (though they're phrasing things slightly differently) - Any gaps or errors in those answers can be filled in/corrected by the Microsoft representative who will walk you through the downgrade (and who you'll have to talk to anyway - Microsoft goes out of their way to make this difficult because they don't want you downgrading).


Short version: Your question wasn't closed because it's bad, or because we don't like you - it was closed because we really don't want to screw you over by giving you bad advice.

2
  • :). Ok. But the reason for closing should have been off-topic, rather than duplicate. Just to highlight you, one said that Microsoft will give new key, whereas the other said MS will not give new key. That was 1 contradiction / conflict Jun 11, 2013 at 17:32
  • 12
    @AllSolutions The standard closure for licensing questions is as a duplicate of the canonical licensing question (they are a specific kind of "off topic" - that target question exists to head off spending hours explaining to someone why we won't answer their question). We've been doing it this way for a while, because it works better than plain "Off Topic".
    – voretaq7
    Jun 11, 2013 at 17:40

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .