Microsoft exec suggests AI agents will need to buy software licenses, just like employees https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-executive-suggests-ai-agents-buy-software-licenses-seats-2026-4
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@cwebber Haha yeah, or steal or pirate the software like any other AI steals and pirates content from the internet.
AI really makes them come up with the weirdest ideas ...
Anyone thought that in order to purchase a license one must have funds to do so. Would you provide your account or credit card data to an AI?
Didn't think so.@Brokar @cwebber anyway, majority of software in terms of micro services is running in Linux using open source tools, even copilot cli is written in node-js. So this is just smoking mirrors. Agents will run in docker or whatever container (tbh they should be there anyway) and no seats needed. In fact agents work with text files, they don’t give a shit about IDE. So if he implying they shall play for seats for paid SDKs that will not hold at court I believe, or companies will shift to opensource alternatives and pay for enterprise support where needed, and that’s usually seatless. Et the end who will be beaten, are the big software houses, who sells such proprietary SDKs
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@wordshaper @cwebber per token.
As in, you have to use the tokens for the AI still, but also pay a separate software license for every token you spend.
Shit, I probably shouldn't give them ideas.
@EdCates @wordshaper @cwebber They probably have already worse ones.
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@cwebber That's hilarious. Who's going to *make them* purchase instead of pirate it? The folks that taught them to not lie, er, I mean hallucinate?
Yeah. Give your head a shake.
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@cwebber That's hilarious. Who's going to *make them* purchase instead of pirate it? The folks that taught them to not lie, er, I mean hallucinate?
Yeah. Give your head a shake.
@AG7GM @cwebber as AI strategist I have a solution, so let’s have agentic AI, let’s say theirs suggestion 20 of them, they do the “monkey work” and when needed some seated pricing interactions, they delegate to single dedicated agent that does what’s needed. The agentic orchestration on top of it shall be fairly trivial. It is really easy to use it against them. I believe AI can be helping tool to humans and I mean helping tool not replacement. Just another fancy tool in someone’s toolset.
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@blogdiva @cwebber Other recent example include a fight between licenses and CPU architecture. A database server (cough Oracle) is ridiculously expensive once things go beyond two CPU sockets? Well, IBM would sell you a special two socket incredibly multi core CPU system for a wincingly high but not quite as high price as licensing four SQL cores.
Of course, that only works for one release, the licensing catches up, and cores per socket become limited etc etc.
@syllopsium @blogdiva @cwebber I think at least MS fixed this as there is some licence complicated calculation based on cores not sockets. This happened already in I think SQL Server 2016 I believe Oracle does have the same
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Microsoft exec suggests AI agents will need to buy software licenses, just like employees https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-executive-suggests-ai-agents-buy-software-licenses-seats-2026-4
*deep breath in*
HAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA of fucking course lmao
@cwebber I would imagine those AI agents would manage to find and use company credit cards and splurge on everything, and the employees get blamed for that! Oh that would be so wonderful! *infinitely heavy sarcasm*
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Microsoft exec suggests AI agents will need to buy software licenses, just like employees https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-executive-suggests-ai-agents-buy-software-licenses-seats-2026-4
*deep breath in*
HAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA of fucking course lmao
@cwebber 7years ago I purchased a used pc and installed Linux Mint, which works still fine....
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@cwebber if Microsoft is going to charge license fees for agents using their software I can only assume that Oracle sales reps are busy inventing a whole new branch of mathematics to calculate their AI licensing fees.
@wordshaper @cwebber They don't need to. Their age-old "how much revenue did you make last year? That will do nicely" ploy will still work in the agentic era.
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Microsoft exec suggests AI agents will need to buy software licenses, just like employees https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-executive-suggests-ai-agents-buy-software-licenses-seats-2026-4
*deep breath in*
HAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA of fucking course lmao
@cwebber and of course the licenses come with Copilot, which will need its own license, and so on. Self-licking ice cream cone.
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Microsoft exec suggests AI agents will need to buy software licenses, just like employees https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-executive-suggests-ai-agents-buy-software-licenses-seats-2026-4
*deep breath in*
HAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA of fucking course lmao
@cwebber I can see where this is going:
1. Make Copilot a mandatory part of every MS product.
2. Declare Copilot as an agent.
3. Since it contains an agent, your license now needs its own additional license.
4. Copilot is a mandatory part of the additional license.
5. Go to step 3.Infinite profit!
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@cwebber If that's not yet another reason to ditch #AIslop and #Microsoft then IDK what is.
- I mean, these value-removing & greedy assholes literally want not just Per-Core #Licensing for their #Server Software but also in case of #Virtualization demand to account for all cores of the host hardware, not just the ones made available to the #VM.
- Which is so absurd that I want regulators to actually clamp down on that and ban that bs term.
That's why I don't do #MicroSlop!
- I mean, these value-removing & greedy assholes literally want not just Per-Core #Licensing for their #Server Software but also in case of #Virtualization demand to account for all cores of the host hardware, not just the ones made available to the #VM.
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Microsoft exec suggests AI agents will need to buy software licenses, just like employees https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-executive-suggests-ai-agents-buy-software-licenses-seats-2026-4
*deep breath in*
HAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA of fucking course lmao
@cwebber Always has been like that with virtualization, continuous integration, all the things... What are the news?
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Microsoft exec suggests AI agents will need to buy software licenses, just like employees https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-executive-suggests-ai-agents-buy-software-licenses-seats-2026-4
*deep breath in*
HAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA of fucking course lmao
@cwebber Actually, maybe they should. And they should definitely pay taxes.
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@fluffykittycat @cwebber In fact, #Oracle and #Microsoft are the reasons why #AMD & #Intel charge a premium for low-core - count Server CPUs!
- I kid you not…
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Microsoft exec suggests AI agents will need to buy software licenses, just like employees https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-executive-suggests-ai-agents-buy-software-licenses-seats-2026-4
*deep breath in*
HAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA of fucking course lmao
It's only fair that AI agents should also have to book a hotel room when you travel with your laptop.
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Microsoft exec suggests AI agents will need to buy software licenses, just like employees https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-executive-suggests-ai-agents-buy-software-licenses-seats-2026-4
*deep breath in*
HAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA of fucking course lmao
@cwebber their emplyees need to buy the software they work with?
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Microsoft exec suggests AI agents will need to buy software licenses, just like employees https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-executive-suggests-ai-agents-buy-software-licenses-seats-2026-4
*deep breath in*
HAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA of fucking course lmao
@cwebber Hahaha
Agentic Economy at scale -
Microsoft exec suggests AI agents will need to buy software licenses, just like employees https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-executive-suggests-ai-agents-buy-software-licenses-seats-2026-4
*deep breath in*
HAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA of fucking course lmao
@cwebber it's all about transfer of capital, always has been -
Microsoft exec suggests AI agents will need to buy software licenses, just like employees https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-executive-suggests-ai-agents-buy-software-licenses-seats-2026-4
*deep breath in*
HAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA of fucking course lmao
@cwebber
they’re welcome to do that... all code that was used unlawfully for training should receive a monthly contribution
