Microsoft licensing

Richard writes: Wrong. As long as you have the certificate of authenticity for copies of MS-DOS, you can continue to ship product using that operating system. Medical device manufacturers are doing this because if they change the operating system, they have to requalify their devices which is a very expensive process. So they continue to buy NOS copies of MS-DOS, as long as they have the certificate of authenticity, and use those to ship their products. They will continue to do this as long as the cost of obtaining NOS MS-DOS product is less than the recertification process. Given the number of NOS copies still in the marketplace, they won't need to upgrade the OS for some time. There is a local guy who mostly deals in C=64 equipment that has been making quite a nice side business of finding NOS copies of MS-DOS for some time now. You would think so, wouldn't you, but as I said before Microsoft is being very creative. The software that you're talking about is unused, possibly retail or possibly OEM, but in any case the license has not been attached so it can be used on any device (for OEM, provided that the equipment is new). You would think that an OEM license, since it is attached permanently to the hardware, would transfer with the hardware, right? You would think that presenting the certificate of authenticity or other evidence that the hardware was licensed would be enough to show a license, right? Not so fast.