Knut Boehnert (10/18/2011)
One other problem is the enforcement. While I like the idea to pay by scale how can unscrupulous customers be forced to pay the right scale?So buying one core, 2GB license and then deploy on 32 core, 2 TB server? The lockdown has to be in the code which could be buggy or lead to side problems (it needs cycles to check that the underlying hardware hasn't changed etc).
So a simpler licensing model becomes an engineering problem. Nothing that can not be solved but imagine the outcry that MS interrogates your server...
I guess there is no real easy answer to this dilemma.
It's already not checked. There isn't a check for per processor licensing now in the code. It's an administrative thing, and we ought to be able to expand it. Plenty of other platforms make the checks or even have "unlock keys" so hardware isn't interrogated, without issues. Not a show stopper, from what I see.