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The Future of Windows Software Distribution
Diomidis Spinellis writes "Microsoft's Windows Marketplace Labs offer a
preview of their Digital Locker technology.
The Digital Locker uses Microsoft's Passport Network to allow Windows users to search, buy, and download software from multiple retailers, storing their product keys for future installations.
Both retailers offering the service support digital rights management technologies:
Digital River promotes its SoftwarePasport, and
eSsellerate its Product Activation technology.
Will this technology trigger an across-the-board adoption of DRM for Windows software?
How will it affect the distribution of free and open-source software?"
Amazon already has a "Digital Locker" into which digital items like DVD extras, Users Manuals, and extra music tracks are instantly stored whenever you make an associated purchase. They actually call it your Digital Locker.
I wonder if anyone in MS marketing has been shopping at Amazon lately?
Error:
I don't think it will effect Open Source much at all. However user friendly it gets it can't get much quicker and simpler than a GUIed-over apt-get, such as Synaptic found in Ubuntu. Then again there's a lot of Open Source software availible for Windows aswell... Maybe the submitter was questioning the stand of Open Source vs. closed source on the Windows platform alone?
All rites reversed 2010
This seems more like a crippled, intrusive version of Apt-Get. Hardly compelling, compared to Ubuntu's synaptic...
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
They need this kind of technology to compete with free software
The absence of license key for openoffice and linux for example
is more tempting for a switch than the freeness that the sotware gives.
Worst thing is, we all know that's exactly what will happen, after some time.
I'm really sick of this industry, when you look at its history it's clearly going *backward* most of the time. And more often than not, the worst technologies are the most workshipped, simply because they were better marketed.
When you sit back and look at the way IT advances, it makes no sense whatsoever. I mean, there were better programming tools that what we've got today 35 years ago, and this whole client/server -> microcomputer -> microcomputer/server migration is totally crazy.
Of course in professional environment having a microcomputer with its own system and applications for each user is totally crazy, how is it even possible that such a silly idea has been so widely accepted ?
" nothing about this is good."
I disagree. Either MS will open up a loophole you can drive a truck through or this will be the best thing ever for open source and commercial software which competes with MS.
I can't wait for the future when it will be impossible to steal windows and other MS software. As long as people can get office for free they will never use openoffice.
Of course MS will never let it come to that. They will release non DRM software that anybody can copy and use. What's the alternative? Lock the third world out of their software?
evil is as evil does
Before Product Activation (or similar models) people could freely buy new computers, transferring all of their software for themselves, while keeping it on their old one for the kids. You were safe knowing that your "investment" in software didn't go to waste with that new computer. (I'm NOT saying this was legal, but it's a VERY common practice.)
That will change now that software will be tied to a single computer. Imagine spending several hundred bucks in software, which is quite easy considering the price of anti-virus software and office suites today. A few years later you want to buy a new computer, but all the software will have to be bought all over again. Is it worth it? Maybe. Maybe not.
The point is that people won't be free to upgrade anymore. There will be a cost in addition to the hardware. Replacing all the software you've already bought.
One company could be helped but this, though: Apple. If you have to buy all new software anyway, you might as well switch and go with a Mac.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
So, you're working the weekend to get a report finished that *has* to be done for Monday. Coincidentally, the electrical engineers are working the weekend, too. Off goes your power for half an hour, and when it comes up, it turns out the power cut neatly nuked your license file. None of your software will open.
Your options:
1) Wait till 9am Monday, when the Software Licensing Helpline opens, spend two hours convincing unsympathetic staff you're not a criminal, then do four hour's work in 30 minutes
2) Head over to openoffice.org and sourceforge.net, grab some software that will work *now*, finish the report.
The real victims will be smaller software producers that don't use the system. And, of course, anyone who whose software is doing too well against a Microsoft product, who may just find themselves barred from the system. But then, a convicted monopolist wouldn't do anything like that, would they?
Time will tell if this is another DRM hinderance which adds value to OSS, or if they made things easier (no more typing in insanely long license keys). I'm guessing the former.
Why would I want another copy of my license key floating around on a public network? Especially with MS "guarding"it. I would even venture to say that my license keys are more secure because they don't have a central access point (ie: different companies). If I were to use this service and someone could contact MS and autheticate they could grab _all_ of my license keys. Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Maya would total several thousand dollars in hard earned cash.
I won't even get into them wanting my credit card number. I've avoided giving them one for a couple of decades now and I'm not about to give in ;)
Second: This is where they are taking Passport? Didn't Ebay leave the program a while back? From what I remember the list of participants is teeny.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
If you can admit that there is a place for shareware on Linux, as opposed to freeware, then, having a mechanism such as this is a godsend for independent authors.
With my shareware registration service now, regnow, I have the ability to not only get paid myself, but, also, to share the wealth with web sites that host my product and drive sales to it. So for example, I might wind up paying a particular site a 40% commission on sales if they sold a copy of Commodity Server.
This is my sig.
Look, people didn't want Passport or Hailstorm. Microsoft just won't be told.
It's called Steam. It's been done microsoft.
Do people really need reminders that MS is a criminal organization?
Criminal ACCORDING TO THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE. Not criminal according to me. If you're going to use the DOJ definition, then you're a criminal for ripping a CD, backing up a DVD movie, or playing a DVD on Linux (if you've ever done any of those things). That's my point. Screaming "criminal" is pointless when you consider the definition of "criminal".
Apparently, another DOJ/Sun/Netscape/AOL shill...
Didn't Linux get people used to great software with no packaging?
I'm actually really excited about this, as it is long overdue. There is really no reason for software to be purchased through traditional retail channels anymore. Not only should this be slightly cheaper, but it will allow for impulse purchases without spending the few hours it would take to go get the stuff. See a positive review of Halo? Go and download the game. Need to edit a PDF file before your meeting tomorrow? Instead of waiting for the store to open tomorrow morning, or running off to Kinkos and run up a dollar-a-minute bill, just buy the software you need right now and use it. All of your software would be available in a centralized location somewhere, helping to make things easy to find with Microsoft's legendary User Interface skills (cough cough).
The only potential (and probably highly likely) problem that I can see is if it were unnecessarily expensive to get into Microsoft's little digital mall that it became dominated by a few big retailers. The UI could also be crappy, the application might crash all of the time, the DRM could make it difficult to carry things between computers... So there are other potential problems. But as a fundamental ideal, buying software in 100% digital form, and in a forum that comes with every system is kind of nice. I'm sad that Apple didn't do this first, but I'm glad somebody other than Valve did.
The ______ Agenda
Now almost every copy of windows I see running is legit, because it came with the computer.
Piracy of applications is more important than piracy of the OS, and I don't think that has abated since the Win3.1 days. Possibly become more common. (IHNSTBTU = I Have No Statistics To Back That Up)
where there's fish, there's cats