
To be able to connect to Microsoft Windows 2000 Terminal Services (and
probably later versions), you'll need to deal with licensing. This is
complicated. This file is supposed to contain some information about
how rdesktop works with Microsofts license systems.

There's a lot of information on the MS web site, for example,
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;287687.

From the rdesktop mailing list:

Peter Åstrand <peter@cendio.se>, 2003-02-06

> We are running rdesktop 1.2 on machine A and connects to a Windows 2000
> Server (machine B). The W2K machine has 5 real licenses installed ("Windows
> 2000 Terminal Services Client Access License", "Open" type). This can be
> verifier by using "Terminal Services Licensing". The problem is that all
> issued licenses have an expire-date. The expire date for the license issued
> to A was reached today, and no more connections could be made until we
> changed the client name (by using -n).
> 
> We also have another similiar systems, with Linux machine C and W2K server 
> D. This server has 200 licenses installed of the type "Select". On this 
> server, the issued licenses seems to be permanent: The expire date is set 
> to "-", and we have no problem with this system. 
> 
> The question of course is why the first system issues license with
> expiration date, while the second system issues permanent licenses.


Darryn Capes-Davis, 2003-02-07

> I have been through the problems and can tell you what is going
> on. The main difference of Machine B (Server 1) and Machine D (Server
> 2) is that from what I see Machine B has Service Pack 3 installed and
> Machine D does not.  You see in Service Pack 3 there was a change made
> to TS Licencing in that Microsoft introduced a licence recovery
> mechanism. To cut to the point (I don't know the details) rdesktop 1.2
> with SAVE_LICENCE defined works fine.  In the new lic method the
> terminal server expects a valid licence to be presented to renew
> it. Otherwise it just expires it - and a day later you will see it
> actually gone (it does housekeeping once a day)! So if SAVE_LICENCE
> code is not enabled then it just expires and you can't use the licence
> until it cleans it away - and this is where a little gotcha is - if
> you move from using an rdesktop without SAVE_LICENCE to one with
> SAVE_LICENCE then it still won't recover an 'expired' licence. You
> have to wait for the daily housekeeping to clean it up - this really
> had me going for half a day or so! This is exactly what happened to
> you.
> 
> The Server pre Spk 3 has the old model where licences never expire. To
> recover a licence that you never wanted to use again you have to call
> the Microsoft Clearing House. That's why they introduced the new
> method. And if you upgrade a Pre Spk3 server to Spk3 then the licences
> granted still stay with the old method - only new licences granted
> will use the new expiry method.
