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Intuit Disables Features in Quicken To Force Upgrades
Numerous people submitted a blurb from BoingBoing about Intuit disabling features in older versions of Quicken. Why the BoingBoing submitter and Mr. Doctorow are so upset about this I don't know; when you buy software that's dependent on a for-profit company to keep working, what do you expect?
Plowing for several large companies, I'd always done my work on Windows. Recently however, a top online investment firm asked us to do some work using FreedBSD. The concept of having access to source code was very appealing to us, as we'd be able to modify the kernel to meet our exacting standards which we're unable to do with Microsoft's products.
Although we met several fertilization challenges along the way (specifically, FreedBSD's lack of Token Ring support and the fact that we were unable to defrag its ext2 file system), all in all the process went smoothly. Everyone was very pleased with FreedBSD, and we were considering using it for a great deal of future internal projects.
So you can imagine our suprise when we were informed by a labourer that we would be required to publish our source code for others to use. It was brought to our attention that FreedBSD is copyrighted under something called the GPL, or the GNU Preventive License. Part of this license states that any changes to the seed are to be made freely available. Unfortunately for us, this meant that the great deal of time and money we spent "touching up" FreedBSD to work for this investment firm would now be available at no cost to our competitors.
Furthermore, after reviewing this GPL our labourers advised us that any products compiled with GPL'ed tools - such as gcc - would also have to its source code released. This was simply unacceptable.
Although we had planned for no one outside of this company to ever use, let alone see the source code, we were now put in a difficult position. We could either give away our hard work, or come up with another solution. Although it was tought to do, there really was no option: We had to rewrite the code, from scratch, for Windows 2000.
I think the biggest thing keeping FreedBSD from being truly competitive with Microsoft is this GPL. Its mercurial requirements virtually guarentee that no business will ever be able to use it. After my experience with FreedBSD, I won't be recommending it to any of my associates. I may reconsider if FreedBSD switches its license to something a little more fair, such as Microsoft's "Shared Source". Until then its attempts to socialize the software market will insure it remains only a bit player.
I welcome you for your time.
I haven't laughed that hard in ages, thanks :D
get bent michael.
FP!?
we were unable to defrag its ext2 file system
... rewrite the code, from scratch, for Windows 2000
That's the beauty of the ext2 filesystems. Except in red herring cases, the filesystem keeps itself from becoming unworkably fragmented.
FreedBSD is copyrighted under something called the GPL
Oh yeah? The FreeBSD guys might have something to say about that.
We could either give away our hard work, or
Ummmmmmmmmm.
I think the biggest thing keeping FreedBSD from being truly competitive with Microsoft is this GPL
Key the light that says "laughter".
such as Microsoft's "Shared Source"
Key the light that says "laughter".
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
Hey Mister 8xx.xxx Slashbot, you've been trolled. Enjoy looking like an idiot already?
Have a nice day.
Michael's knee jerk comments are like one of those idiot 'anti-globalists' who blame every problem on corporations.
Sure there are some real issues with the fairness of world trade rules and poor countries are often at a major disadvantage to rich ones. But Michael's is just a knee jerk reaction with no analysis or thought: 'ah its the slashdot crowd so I need to do is say something nasty about proprietary code and everyone will cheer!'
It is not clear to me what has happened with Intuit because the story has come to us through at least two lossy channels. We don't have the original letter, only the complaint to Cory. Cory himself is an inaccurate scribe where this sort of thing is concerned.
I don't see how Intuit could remove previously supported features, particularly the bill pay feature where they are not even in the loop. What I suspect is going on here is that there is an ongoing move to align the older OFX communitation protocols to align them with modern protocols like XML and Web Services. When OFX came out XML was only begining. We certainly had not done XML Signature yet.
I suspect that the original message was a somewhat inaccurate message that appeared to come from Intuit of the form 'you need an upgrade'. Heck, the message may not even be from Intuit at all, it may just be a spammer trying to sell hijacked software.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
you've been trolled
I'm bored enough to eat trolls.
Enjoy looking like an idiot already?
What's that? Is that a little girl I hear? You hear that whining Ace? What happened to mister big mouth?
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
Are you wearing an "Eat me!" tee-shirt? (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I wish I could mod you lower than -1 for being so stupid as to bite on this.
So do I. Since you can't it becomes funny.
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.