>Ok, then several billion a year. Still, whether its a couple million, or a couple billion, why should the company get bashed for doing anything other than just sitting there and taking it?

Well, Microsoft is either the most or almost the most valuable company in the world, and BillG is the most or almost the richest guy in the world. So you could argue that the prevailing model (i.e. pre XP, pre-mandetory registration, pre MSDN price increase, pre-intrusive attitude) has not been exactly a failure.

The fact is that Microsoft has now chosen a multitude of steps that appear to inconvenience many of its most passionate allies (and I used to count myself among them...) is cause for concern. While each incremental step may not be significant when seen in isolation, the aggregate of all of the steps signals a major change of attitude. I used to count Microsoft as a business partner for myself and my clients. Now, I think the company is becoming much less user-friendly, much much less of an ally. It is difficult to recommend Microsoft products to a medium-sized business (sure....dump Novell and Unix....do everything with Win 2000 and Office) when the business may end up getting hit for a spurious "software audit" out of the blue.

I've always questioned the value of the MSDN Enterprise anyway, at least for a one-man shop. I buy VFP, and buy TechNet, and renew Technet after letting it lapse for six months. Between those things, and occasionally getting things like the Developer Hot packs,and the software distributed at the TechNet road-shows I get more beta software than I can use, and plenty of instances of 120 versions of things like SQL Server and stuff.

--- Larry