The problem with software "licenses" is explained in some ways by Eric Raymond in his excellent "The Cathedral and the Bazaar". What this amounts to is one company setting an inflated price for software that should really get its cash from providing services (support etc) and not manufacturing. Software providers carrying out their work under the guise of manufacturing a product get away with it because of advertising and marketing, as well as special deals behind the scenes. They make their profit from the actual sale of the product, which is not a good business model to follow. To quote Eric Raymond:

"It is also worth noting that the manufacturing delusion encourages price structures that are pathalogically out of line with the actual breakdown of development costs. If (as is generally accepted) over 75% of a typical software project's life cycle costs will be in maintenance and debugging and extensions, then the common price and relatively low or zero support fees is bound to lead to results that serve all parties poorly." P.120

The price of Office is a great example of this, and yet the service and support for Office as a product is actually quite dim. On top of that, John Honeyball of the popular PC Pro magazine has stated on many releases of this office suite that there remain major mathematical bugs in Excel that have been brought to Microsoft's attention but even still crop up in XP. This is bad for the consumer, since their end product is not what it should be through correct testing and debugging, and good for Microsoft who answer to no-one and set the price on the product themselves according to what *they* think its worth is--and this is usually calculated by man hours, development costs, packaging, advertising etc etc.

Where does this then lead us? To a license that states the software is still not *yours* when you purchase it- instead it remains *ours*. Open source doesn't allow this type of marketing, and building an industry on service and support would benefit far more people than relying on marketing and manufacturing of any one particular software product. This is another reason why M$ wants subscription based licensing. Think about it. If the software isn't ever *yours*, even after purchase of hefty license fees, then under subscription based services we see total control of not only your software but also your use of the said software, and a financial hook that makes sure you continually renew your license when the subscription is due. Now its not one perpetual license, but perpetual renewing of a license!

Schools suffer at the hands of this type of monopoly and business *success* because they end up paying multiple licens fees for every piece of software they own. There are CALs, end user licenses, network licenses, per seat, subscription based ad infinitum. Is it any wonder that schools and some individuals lose the plot and just give up on the whole licensing thing? It's wrong, but it happens, often out of confusion.

Open source licenses offer the best value for money and reflect the service that you will get from the product once you understand the methods employed by those same providers to offer that support. SuSE may cost £60, but that money (barring commercial software) gets you the chance to install it on ALL your systems- from server to workstations, and keep it there perpetually with no subscription renewal and no technological disadvantage over using M$ products.