Microsoft this week have made, what some consider, a massive statement to their Partners. No more Internal Use Rights (IUR) for you.
The message has not gone down well with Partners around the globe, and a petition was already setup and is heading towards 3000 signatures at the time of writing.
Microsoft Inspire is a week away, and I would think that the feedback from partners is going to be grim for those taking questions. No doubt Microsoft have a trick up their sleeve, and I sure hope its a good one, because this really isn’t good news for us that like to “Dog-food” their products, even on internal Business systems. One of my engineers voiced “Sure, if I cannot work on the product day to day, I am not going to have the information to support and sell it”. Therein lay the issue… what exactly does this line mean that is published on the Partner website:
“product licenses offered through the Microsoft Partner Network may only be used for business development scenarios, including demonstration purposes, solution/services development purposes, and internal training purposes”
https://partner.microsoft.com/en-us/membership/internal-use-software
Does that mean that if I am an engineer using these products on my work desktop machine that I am falling into this category? Is the licence change just a simple way that Microsoft legal can stop people signing up as a partner and then using the software? If so, why do this to Silver and Gold partners?
Its all very strange behavior from Microsoft. Its not like the Partner program is free, or even cheap. The benefits of being a Partner in general are not exactly “set your world on fire” as it stands already.
I am sure time will tell, and I suspect that during and after Inspire 2019, we will all know more. Until then, I am off to install another Debian system to have a play 😉