The nightmare that is Windows licensing is discussed in this thread.

Makes me think about path dependence, sunk cost fallacies and bad idea traps — in the context that I had a person at work try to justify to me one time why it made sense that at many companies it requires one and sometimes two people to do nothing but specialize in complying with Microsoft’s onerous and incomprehensible licensing.

Listening to someone explain why something has to be a certain way when it absolutely does not is one of the reasons that I have given up on humanity, because it happens so damn often.

Do people mistake the reasons that something came to exist for a teleological inevitability? Do they truly believe — as this person did — that Microsoft’s bonkers scheme is the best possible solution rather than one of the worst?

I think some people — most people — just take the world as a given, and then perceive any attempt to change it as a threat. Even if it’s something as byzantine, bizarre, and useless as Microsoft’s software licensing racket.