dual/multi-boot computers and software licensing

Question

Suppose you have a computer with two or more operating systems, and a certain piece of software whose license terms allows it to be installed on one computer, and it does a daily check with a remote server to verify that your serial is only used on the original install computer. You install this software on each of your OSes, but since its a different OS the remote server would have to determine that it is not on the same computer, and so would disable your license.

So my question, when a license refers to a single computer, does a situation like this usually count as a single computer, or do the multiple OSes sort of make it multiple computers? How do you think a software vendor (specifically thinking AV companies that do this sort of serial check) would handle this situation?

Answer 1

I think that just depends on the license of the software in question, could go either way. A greedy company would want you to have a license for every install instance (imagine the profit they could get from one client with a powerful server that could virtualize thousands of copies of a piece of software). This is how MS handles some of their software like HPC Server (you need a license for each cluster node... ouch!).