I'm sure if you've been reading this blog long enough you have had a chance to hear some of my tired anecdotes about the idiocy of Microsoft's licensing programs, but today from Britain I have fresh fodder. Web-hosting provider Fasthosts began to offer last week an innovative, streaming version of Office for a flat monthly rate of £4.99 to their customers... with, they claim, full approval from Microsoft's licensing department. It goes without saying that this is considerably cheaper than purchasing the full version of Office, and would continue to be so for, say, four years or so, making it a heck of a deal considering that another version of Office will probably be out before that time is up. Add in all the other conveniences of on-demand software, and you have a bundle of value that seems almost designed to make Steve Ballmer tear out what is left of his hair.

And indeed, this appears to be the case, as Microsoft's UK anti-piracy chief Michala Wardell strongly intimated last Friday, stating, "At present, streaming Microsoft products like Office 2007 via the Web infringes our license regulations. Fasthosts has been informed of this and we are currently working with them to rectify this situation."

The posts I have seen on this matter so far have focused on it as a Microsoft reaction to a SaaS like implementation of one of their core moneymaking products which threatens other sales of that base product. I see it as just another example of Microsoft's licenses being too Byzantine to comprehend, even by various divisions inside the company. This is hardly the first instance we've seen of the company providing different interpretations of its licensing based on who was being asked, but it certainly reinforces the danger of relying on Microsoft licenses to safeguard your business against claims of violation. When something becomes so complex, the only real interpretation will be the one that comes out of the other end of a court case after spending millions in legal fees. It illustrates the fallacy of the argument that proprietary, licensed software (at least of the sort with license agreements like Microsoft's) is any sort of insurance against additional costs, fees, or claims of infringement.