Are those server 2019/2016 licenses on eBay real?

dexvx

[H]ard|Gawd
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Aug 14, 2002
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I have a Server 2012 R2 install and am interested in upgrading it to 2016 or 2019. I see a bunch of licenses for under $10 on eBay.

Is there any catch?
 
Catch? Yeah they are pirated. If you are planning on using it as a desktop OS you can probably wing it. I wouldn't put it on anything critical though. If you are looking at desktop OS's and want something that will give you less of a headache than Server, look into Windows 10 LTSC instead. It strips all the crap out of Windows 10 and you can get the same gray market keys on ebay for $10.
 
Why do we have to keep repeating that if a deal is too good to be true, it probably is. There's no such thing as a miraculous Microsoft licensing sale. All these $10 keys you see in this forum and online are not legit for resale, regardless if they activate.

When you buy these grayware keys you are basically promoting theft because many times they are bought using stolen CC info. Please stop.
 
NO.

/thread.

p.s. read a(n) MS Server EULA. Just do it. So much info in there explains EXACTLY how it works.
 
From what I've found looking at this a couple of years ago is that actually many are also surplus keys/licenses from companies gone bankrupt, upgraded, etc and there are companies that specialize in this market of locating and buying the licenses for resale.

While many if not most license agreements claim to disallow this there have been a number of court cases on it in both directions both here and in Europe where the courts have ruled that disallowing resale, denying support, etc violates certain anti-trust and free market laws regarding fair use. http://www.clearlicensing.org/secondary-market/

That being said I do not think the US has agreed or passed laws allowing it but in Europe they have and Microsoft (nor other companies) can do anything about it. The US Supreme Court has made rulings on first sale doctrine but it applied to physical products. I dont think they have really clearly addressed software licenses here in the US though.

One of the issues that would ultimately come up is that software retailers would then push for more licensing to be time limited and getting rid of perpetual licensing (which is already something most are moving towards anyways).

What I've seen though - most of the licenses on eBay are VLK and MAK keys. Technically using them is a violation of the licensing agreements (if you are in the USA). However they will more often than not work just fine and will never stop working as long as you activate it fairly quick. One issue is these types of keys are generally valid for a specific number of activations at which point Microsoft activation servers will block any further activations. The problem is both with the resellers and many buyers. The problems with activation generally are more due to buyers who buy a single license and than install and activate the key on multiple machines which uses more of the allowable activations. The seller often will not know this and try to sell more activations of that key which then might get blocked resulting in angry buyers. A seller can check the number of activations using the Volume Licensing Service Center on the MS website or VAMT from MS but most do not. What can happen though is if the key becomes widespread or publicly known in which case MS might blacklist the key. If that happens than the WGA component will trigger a deactivation and prevent future updates and potentially limited functionality so there is certainly some level of risk.
 
Court cases aside... you can't buy a companies bankrupt keys and use them. You can't resell your own personal keys. There is no legal way to do this. Read the MS EULA.

If you want a server os and you don't want to pay for it there are plenty of far superior Linux and BSD options.

If you want a desktop version of windows that lets you control your OS for free... pirate it.

Seriously that is all your doing anyway. Why pretend buying $20 keys is anything less. (or again run a complete free superior OS)
 
From what I've found looking at this a couple of years ago is that actually many are also surplus keys/licenses from companies gone bankrupt, upgraded, etc and there are companies that specialize in this market of locating and buying the licenses for resale.

While many if not most license agreements claim to disallow this there have been a number of court cases on it in both directions both here and in Europe where the courts have ruled that disallowing resale, denying support, etc violates certain anti-trust and free market laws regarding fair use. http://www.clearlicensing.org/secondary-market/

That being said I do not think the US has agreed or passed laws allowing it but in Europe they have and Microsoft (nor other companies) can do anything about it. The US Supreme Court has made rulings on first sale doctrine but it applied to physical products. I dont think they have really clearly addressed software licenses here in the US though.

One of the issues that would ultimately come up is that software retailers would then push for more licensing to be time limited and getting rid of perpetual licensing (which is already something most are moving towards anyways).

What I've seen though - most of the licenses on eBay are VLK and MAK keys. Technically using them is a violation of the licensing agreements (if you are in the USA). However they will more often than not work just fine and will never stop working as long as you activate it fairly quick. One issue is these types of keys are generally valid for a specific number of activations at which point Microsoft activation servers will block any further activations. The problem is both with the resellers and many buyers. The problems with activation generally are more due to buyers who buy a single license and than install and activate the key on multiple machines which uses more of the allowable activations. The seller often will not know this and try to sell more activations of that key which then might get blocked resulting in angry buyers. A seller can check the number of activations using the Volume Licensing Service Center on the MS website or VAMT from MS but most do not. What can happen though is if the key becomes widespread or publicly known in which case MS might blacklist the key. If that happens than the WGA component will trigger a deactivation and prevent future updates and potentially limited functionality so there is certainly some level of risk.
All that may be true, but "surplus" keys from bankrupt companies aren't what the eBay shitheads are selling -- they're peddling MSDN keys pure and simple.

There's actually a tool you can plug a key into and it'll display the origin/nature of it - guaranteed the eBay sourcss keys will come up as MSDN.
 
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Court cases aside... you can't buy a companies bankrupt keys and use them. You can't resell your own personal keys. There is no legal way to do this. Read the MS EULA.

If you want a server os and you don't want to pay for it there are plenty of far superior Linux and BSD options.

If you want a desktop version of windows that lets you control your OS for free... pirate it.

Seriously that is all your doing anyway. Why pretend buying $20 keys is anything less. (or again run a complete free superior OS)
I would almost rather people pirate Windows than to think they are "going legit" buying $10 miracle deal keys. At least that way you are not promoting and giving money to people obviously doing something illegal.

Buying a $10 key for Windows or Office is no more legit than pirating it. Bottom line.
 
I would almost rather people pirate Windows than to think they are "going legit" buying $10 miracle deal keys. At least that way you are not promoting and giving money to people obviously doing something illegal.

Buying a $10 key for Windows or Office is no more legit than pirating it. Bottom line.

Theres threads in the FS forum of people doing the same thing. Shady at best but I don't feel as bad knowing that im going to end up paying with my personal data in the long run anyways. Gray market ethics vs gray area privacy ethics.
 
Buying a $10 key for Windows or Office is no more legit than pirating it. Bottom line.

There are people on here that sell $25 Office/Windows Pro keys as legit and non-MSDN.

So how much would a 2016/2019 key actually supposed to go for? I see a tier of keys selling for ~$100 as well. I'm also quite familiar with Ubuntu LTS servers, but for this specific case I need Windows because Nvidia + Linux = sadness.

Edit: Seems to me the ROI of buying grey market keys seems to be better. If those $100 keys are legit, and assume those $10 keys are revoked 1 year later, you can use 10 years of keys to break even to $100.
 
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make a learning account to get your server licenses edit requires and education email
 
Has anyone ever actually witness an activated key be revoked? The keys certainly can be blocked for activation but I have yet to see an activated device become deactivated. Some sellers specifically say they will only send the key when you are actually ready to type it in. I think once you manage to activate you are in the clear.

I'm not saying activation = legal. Just that I think the key being revoked from an activated devices at an unknown period of time is a total assumption.
 
There are people on here that sell $25 Office/Windows Pro keys as legit and non-MSDN.

So how much would a 2016/2019 key actually supposed to go for? I see a tier of keys selling for ~$100 as well. I'm also quite familiar with Ubuntu LTS servers, but for this specific case I need Windows because Nvidia + Linux = sadness.

Edit: Seems to me the ROI of buying grey market keys seems to be better. If those $100 keys are legit, and assume those $10 keys are revoked 1 year later, you can use 10 years of keys to break even to $100.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/cloud-platform/windows-server-pricing

If you pay anything less then 500 bucks for windows server its likely not legit. The only way to get cheaper is to buy volume. (not the retailer... you I mean)

As I said though if your intent on paying 10 bucks for a key expecting to just buy more keys all the time... just find a pirate activator or whatever it is the cool kids use to pirate windows these days.

As far as Nvidia + Linux being sadness.... how so ? And are you actually running a server... or are you looking to game and or do something that requires GPU horsepower ?

If your just looking for a solid desktop... there are plenty of good Linux distros that have zero issue with Nvidia out of the box. The only distros that are in anyway a pain to install closed source NV drivers too are Fedora and Suse. You would have no issue with Ubuntu if you want a legit server OS... PopOs if you want an ubuntu based desktop... or Manjaro if you are really looking for a power user desktop OS.
 
Hmm... looks like in addition, there is a per core licensing above 16 physical cores. So I may just bite the bullet and move to Ubuntu Server.

Basically its a relatively proprietary setup with hardware raid and HVEC encoding needs via a Pascal Quadro card.
 
Hmm... looks like in addition, there is a per core licensing above 16 physical cores. So I may just bite the bullet and move to Ubuntu Server.

Basically its a relatively proprietary setup with hardware raid and HVEC encoding needs via a Pascal Quadro card.

Seeing as you have some Ubuntu LTS experience. I would say just go with Ubuntus latest non LTS. Its solid... it doesn't ship with the Nvidia closed source driver installed, but its easy to switch to then you should be mostly golden.

According to phoronix todays Linux is still the way to go if your many core system is a Threadripper. IME the Intel hardware runs much better under Linux as well... hey if you do have some Linux know how and you have a xeon system you could always go the Clear Linux route. Intel has Clear running very well... might be some more package building on your end depending vs Ubuntu. But no doubt Intels OS is the fastest option for Intel hardware.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=windows-1903-threadripper&num=1

https://developer.nvidia.com/ffmpeg NVs encoding runs great under Linux.

https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-video-codec-sdk and if your solution is extremely custom, Linux would be the easier OS to deal with I would imagine. There is a reason whey all professional encoding is done on Linux servers. ;)
 
Seeing as you have some Ubuntu LTS experience. I would say just go with Ubuntus latest non LTS. Its solid... it doesn't ship with the Nvidia closed source driver installed, but its easy to switch to then you should be mostly golden.

I don't like non-LTS not because its not functional but for the peace of mind. Which is why I absolutely abhor Fedora.

https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-video-codec-sdk and if your solution is extremely custom, Linux would be the easier OS to deal with I would imagine. There is a reason whey all professional encoding is done on Linux servers. ;)

Not really. The main project I'm attached to (Windows DPDK) is there because much of the encoding solutions need to be Windows.
 
Not really. The main project I'm attached to (Windows DPDK) is there because much of the encoding solutions need to be Windows.

You mean the Linux foundations Data Plane Development Kit ?

Its hardly a windows technology, but it is logical that MS recently announced they where implementing it in win server 2019. I guess if you are working on a commercial project using windows server and DPDK I would suggest you might just want to bite the bullet and purchase an actual copy of Win Server 2019 or perhaps get in on the insider program and run testing versions. If your clients project is based on windows server perhaps that is the way to go.
 
You mean the Linux foundations Data Plane Development Kit ?

Its hardly a windows technology, but it is logical that MS recently announced they where implementing it in win server 2019. I guess if you are working on a commercial project using windows server and DPDK I would suggest you might just want to bite the bullet and purchase an actual copy of Win Server 2019 or perhaps get in on the insider program and run testing versions. If your clients project is based on windows server perhaps that is the way to go.

Yes, the starting drive to port it to Windows was due to SDI applications that were Windows based. Thus the Nvidia encode issues with Linux.
 
Yes, the starting drive to port it to Windows was due to SDI applications that were Windows based. Thus the Nvidia encode issues with Linux.

What Nvidia encode issues with Linux? The VFX industry specifically uses Linux based Render farms using Nvidia hardware, I'm not aware of any Nvidia encode issues under Linux.
 
What Nvidia encode issues with Linux? The VFX industry specifically uses Linux based Render farms using Nvidia hardware, I'm not aware of any Nvidia encode issues under Linux.

I read it as dexvk saying the company/project they are wokring on.... is using a heavy windows API running SDI (single document interface) application.

I imagine being a windows "custom" type deal they likely built the codec encode bits right into the software... which isn't something most modern software programs do anymore. In general things like encode are handed off to an external program like FFMPG ect. If their windows front end simply handed off to FFMPG porting to LInux would be pretty easy... and heck even just running under wine would be easy.

I'm guessing of course.
 
Partly correct. Main reason for Windows is due to timing management. In the production deployment, every frame must arrive at a very specific interval (down to the micro-second). Re-writing such in Linux is not trivial.

But this particular setup is for a home lab testing environment.
 
Court cases aside... you can't buy a companies bankrupt keys and use them. You can't resell your own personal keys. There is no legal way to do this. Read the MS EULA.

If you want a server os and you don't want to pay for it there are plenty of far superior Linux and BSD options.

If you want a desktop version of windows that lets you control your OS for free... pirate it.

Seriously that is all your doing anyway. Why pretend buying $20 keys is anything less. (or again run a complete free superior OS)

Hopefully I don't get into trouble. I sold this to a member here awhile back since I didn't need it. Had Technet at the time.

win7 signature edition.jpg
 
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Court cases aside... you can't buy a companies bankrupt keys and use them. You can't resell your own personal keys. There is no legal way to do this. Read the MS EULA.
You can sell your personal keys, at least in the EU, and possibly Australia. Companies' keys may be subject to restrictions but it depends on the specifics. It is possible to resell some of those as well.
 
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There are people on here that sell $25 Office/Windows Pro keys as legit and non-MSDN.

So how much would a 2016/2019 key actually supposed to go for? I see a tier of keys selling for ~$100 as well. I'm also quite familiar with Ubuntu LTS servers, but for this specific case I need Windows because Nvidia + Linux = sadness.

Edit: Seems to me the ROI of buying grey market keys seems to be better. If those $100 keys are legit, and assume those $10 keys are revoked 1 year later, you can use 10 years of keys to break even to $100.
Not sure what you mean. I've been playing 100+ hours of borderlands on Linux + NVidia...?
 
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