Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Licensing Fee Intended To Reduce Hobbyists
BokLM writes "Microsoft's Amir Majidimehr, Corporate VP of the Windows Digital Media Division, explained at a DRM conference in London why they require a license fee from device makers." From the article: "According to Amir, the fee is not intended to recoup the expenses Microsoft incurred in developing their DRM, or to turn a profit. The intention is to reduce the number of licensees to a manageable level, to lock out 'hobbyists' and other entities that Microsoft doesn't want to have to trouble itself with."
... but what if my hobby is annoying microsoft?
"A Microsoft spokesman has described their DRM licensing scheme as a system for reducing the number of device vendors to a manageable number, so that the company doesn't have to oversee too many developers."
Ballmer: Developers! Developers! Developers!
Yeah, uh huh... right... sounds more like THIS discussion...
Dr. Walter Gibbs: User requests are what computers are for!
Ed Dillinger: DOING OUR BUSINESS is what computers are for.
Isn't that sort of monopolistic of them? Forcing everyone to pay them, whether you develop for them or buy from them.
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
So Slashdot links directly to BoingBoing now? There's something spectacularly lame about that . . . . . . .
Really? I thought that everybody -- especially Slashdot -- had this impression.
Considering we're talking about the oh-so-chipper WMA/V format, they should be paying people to have to work with it.
Bury me in mashed potatoes.
And remember, it's the HOBBYISTS who've done more to advance computing than anything Microsoft has done to advance the state of software development in the world. (Linus Torvalds anyone?)
Those damn hobbyists are the entire problem! Those bastards! Er...this has nothing to do with tromping the little guys...
The intention is to reduce the number of licensors to a manageable level, to lock out "hobbyists" and other entities that Microsoft doesn't want to have to trouble itself with.
Is it just me, or does anyone else think that Microsoft has the resources to "manage" nearly any number of "hobbyists"? I mean, laziness is one thing, but sheesh...
I wonder if there are any backroom deals being made here?
Did you know that "Steve Ballmer" is an anagram for "Tremble, slave!". This explains a lot :)
Guess we can add the "War on Cusotmers" (started by the RIAA) to the country's other great successes -- the War on Terror, War on Drugs, and War on Kids on My Lawn
'll paraphrase the above for you in fewer words.
Interesting. I don't see one instance of Billy G mentioning:
What I do see is a screed claiming that:
So how is that paraphrasing again?
Come on. I'm not fan of Billy G, but you can't honestly claim that the paragraph above says what you say it does.
MS certainly isn't winning over any of the open source community with that move. It really drives the wedge deeper and give more people more reason to not use Windows.
I do have to wonder how much of this is to show a strong front to the increasingly powerful media companies and their mostly oppresive DRM schemes.
Jerry
http://www.networkstrike.com/
No, what's he's saying is don't steal software just to write your own. Thanks to people like him, we now have many free tools and can write our own software without paying, and without stealing. If you truly think that a product is worth using, then pay what they are charging. If you don't think it's worth what they are asking, then don't use it.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
The intention is to reduce the number of licensors to a manageable level, to lock out 'hobbyists' and other entities that Microsoft doesn't want to have to trouble itself with."
If it turns out that hobbyists are a bad thing, then the market will demonstrate that. There's no need to act as if your rights are being suppressed.
Sometimes hobbyists are phenomenal for a platform (the Apple II platform, Linux). Sometimes they don't seem to provide enough benefit to be essential. Game consoles are effectively closed to hobbyists and despite the degree of amateur work, Flash was never really a free platform to seriously develop for.
The only area in which I can think of that this isn't true is when monopolies exist (such as the cell phone market, where cell providers can force the platform closed by requiring that anyone that uses their services provide only a closed platform).
Anyone can sit down and provide something an an encoded audio and video format. There are a lot more MPEG-based players out there than anything else, and it's not as if hobbyists can't produce content for these. Microsoft's chosen their market (at least in the short term). Let them play with the idea and see whether it pans out.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
This isn't news, nor is it some grand conspiracy. It's perfectly normal business practice. If you price a product (or worse, make it available for free,) you'll have huge demand. This demand carries with it a customer support expense, which can be quite large. You can break a company with excessive expenses, of which customer support is one.
When pricing a product, you typically want to set a minimum price specifically for the purpose of eliminating the deadbeat/hobbyist factor. Yes, you'll lose a couple of potential sales because the price presents a barrier to entry, but if you did the math properly, that minor loss is substantially easier to swallow than the loss from a huge non-revenue-generating support obligation. If the majority of your customers are businesses, they won't blink at a couple-hundred bucks for a product.
This really isn't news - Microsoft has been actively trying to limit hobbyists and small businesses entry into creating new applications for the PC for ten years or more. This is just one more way to squeeze them (us) out.
Personally, I don't understand this behavior because it is so damaging in the long term - students (who can also be thought of as "hobbyists") will not be able to easily work on Microsoft products and will naturally gravitate towards more open solutions...
I've never understood why Microsoft wasn't more supportive of the student, hobbyist and small business marketplace. I can understand that they do not want products propagating that use obsolute interfaces/methodologies but there should be some halfway point, not freezing out those of us that want to experiment with PC applications and don't have deep pocket sponsors.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Beyond MS and the XBox, this practice is pretty common in both the HW and SW industries. If you've ever: tried to synthesize FPGA code, get a compiler for a up,uc that's not mainstream, tried to get an eval board, tried to get API info, tried to program for any console or handheld, you've come across this practice.
Most of that stuff is FREE to corporate customers, companies will voluntarily lose money just to get people to try to use their product. However for people on the street, or companies too small to be "real", they will charge thousands upon thousands of dollars for these materials, if they will let you have them at all.
On one hand they're right, true hobbyists often have day jobs that are not in the industry (since those in the industry often gank this stuff from work) and can generate a lot of cost by a multitude of questions and misunderstandings. On the other hand, one persons hobby could turn into a good business, if their idea or project becomes interesting. By discouraging this, they are effectively discouraging innovation in anything less than a rather well funded start-up.
I recently bought (and returned) a Philips mp3 player to use for audiobooks. Not only can the thing not display track time > 1 hr., but there is no mid-track resume feature. Some of the WM licensed players may have this, but some don't. Unfortuantely, this strict control of licensing (or lack thereof) is why the iPod works so well. Well, that and the software on the back-end, but that's a whole different argument.
If Microsoft can't bother with the hobbyists, then the hobbyists won't bother with Microsoft. Result: The new cool things will happen on Linux or Mac, not on Windows.
This is not the smartest thing Microsoft has ever done...
As far as I remember, Microsoft has been calling the OSS community a bunch of hobbyists since the OSS movement appeared on their radar (as a threat, of course). The article agrees, as MS tells "the intention is to reduce the number of licensors [...] to lock out "hobbyists" and other entities that Microsoft doesn't want to have to trouble itself with", the article says this is plain anticompetitive: "I was pretty surprised to hear an executive from Microsoft describe his company's strategy as intentionally anti-competitive and intended solely to freeze out certain classes of operators [...]"
my other sig is a 500 page novel
No, things HAVE changed. Developers have to make money somehow, and 30 years ago they made money from the sale of their software. Today, there is no end to the software you can get for free, with the developer making money on the support of that software.
All your idiotic paraphrasing did was make you sound like an advocate for software theft. If you don't like someone's software, you should go write your own, you shouldn't steal it. If you don't like how much Photoshop costs, you shouldn't steal it, you should use the GIMP. You make it sound like stealing a commercial software package and then using it to write open software is just fine.
You just come accross as another Gates-hater that hates big, bad Microsoft because it's cool to do.
darrell
He says hobbyists cannot write good software:
He says he's the best at doing it:
He says that if you sell software written by yourself, you're just distributing bugs. So that implies that only software written by his company should be distributed because only he has the resources to make it immaculate.
Free software is bad because he can't make money: That "deluge" would almost certainly cause him some financial gain from people who otherwise would have worked on projects to distribute as a hobbyist.
My work here is dung.
...if there's a market for non-DRM hardware, you'll be able to buy it.
Unless Big Business puts enough money into the government to legislate it out of existence.
> Ballmer: Developers! Developers! Developers!
But they are starting the long slow trend that ends with Xbox bow. They still want developers, but only large ones. Because in the end the goal is to turn the PC into an Xbox. All applications are signed by Microsoft and they collect a piece of the action in exchange for it. It solves most of their security problems, lets them tap vast new revenue streams to show investors some growth and allows them the total freedom to screw each developer in turn by introducing their own replacement and deciding the 3rd party app no longer 'meets our strategic vision' and refusing to continue signing.
Democrat delenda est
Classic diplomatic speak. The real issue which was presented by the original post was carefully walked around by BG. By claiming that software sharing is hurting his company (in this case development tools) he precludes giving more concrete examples.
What BG is particularily upset about is that the shared dev. tools are used to create competitive software. Whats more, this is done using software that was never going to make a profit anyway. So BG is upset about a faulty business plan. If he didn't sell dev. tools he would be alright and he could complain about people stealing his OS's (kinda like he did at the start with DOS - he payed much less for it that it was worth, kinda like people that steal windows because they feel that a windows license isnt $500).
Bottom line: Hobbyists will push their software and hardware. Hobbyists create worms and virii for all we know. Hobbyists are bad. Im a hobbyist. A+B != C always.
Gates: "No, the best way to prepare is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating system." -- From: 'Programmers at work', Microsoft Press, Redmond, WA [c1986]:
In 1975 Bill Gates and Paul Allen, who were students at Harvard University at the time, adapted BASIC to run on the popular Altair 8800 computer and sold it to the Altair's manufacturer, MITS. The Altair BASIC interpreter was the first computer language program to run on the type of computer that would later become known as the home computer or personal computer. Even though the BASIC programming language was already in the public domain by then, the interpreter that could run it on home computers wasn't. Thus Gates and Allen had created an original product; a true innovation. It would be one of their last.
Gates and Allen had initially met at Lakeside School (an exclusive private school for rich boys) where Gates became an adept at BASIC on a General Electric Mark II. Shortly thereafter they got access to a PDP-10 run by a private company in Seattle. The company offered free time to the Lakeside school kids to see if they could crash the system. Gates proved to be particularly adept at doing so. When the free time ran out Gates and Allen figured out how to get free time on the PDP-10 by logging on as the system operator. About a year later the private company running the PDP-10 went bankrupt.
This left Gates and Allen without a source of free computing power. Therefore Allen went over to the University of Washington and began using a Xerox computer by pretending to be a graduate student. Gates soon followed, and this went on until they were caught and removed from the campus. They continued to break into university and privately owned computer systems until about 1975. By that time Gates was a student at Harvard University. The BASIC he sold to MITS had been developed and tested on a Harvard PDP-10 using an 8080-emulation program that Allen had adapted from earlier code. In fact, by the time Gates contacted MITS to announce their product, it had never ran on an actual 8080 CPU. The demonstration Gates and Allen put up for MITS in New Mexico was the first time the product actually ran on the system it was intended for. Gates sold it by announcing a product that didn't exist, developing it on the model of the best version available elsewhere, not testing it very seriously, demonstrating an edition that didn't fully work, and finally releasing the product in rather buggy form after a lengthy delay. From then on this modus operandi became Microsoft's trademark.
After Gates sold the new BASIC interpreter to MITS he left Harvard University, and went into business for himself with Allen as a partner. Allen was also an MITS employee at the time, which made his position rather interesting. Gates' departure from Harvard is shrouded in controversy: some say he dropped out, others say he was expelled for stealing computer time. Whatever the case may be, the fact is that Gates did most of the work on his BASIC version in a Harvard computer lab without having been authorized to use the (expensive) computer time needed for the project. Perhaps he did not really steal unauthorized computer capacity (which was a valuable commodity in those days) to develop his first commercially successful product. Yet he has never offered another explanation. He did however send his now-infamous "Open Letter To Hobbyists" to every major computer publication in February 1976, in which he decried the copying of Microsoft software by home computer hobbyists as simple theft. -- excerpt borrowed from Why I hate Microsoft
"The feedback we have gotten from the hundreds of people who say they are using BASIC has all been positive. Two surprising things are apparent, however, 1) Most of these "users" never bought BASIC (less than 10% of all Altair owners have bought BASIC), and 2) The amount of royalties we have received from sales to hobbyists makes the time spent on Altair BASIC worth less than $2 an hour. Why is this? As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share. Who cares if the people who worked on it get paid? Is this fair? One thing you don't do by stealing software is get back at MITS for some problem you may have had. MITS doesn't make money selling software. The royalty paid to us, the manual, the tape and the overhead make it a break-even operation. One thing you do do is prevent good software from being written."
...
... Any resistance to this shows that you are ruining the software industry as we know it. If we fool everyone into thinking they need to pay us money for software, then we can rape the world, are you blind?
And for those of you that hate reading the word of Gates, I'll paraphrase the above for you in fewer words:
Actually a better introduction would be: "for those of you that do not see the things I am imagining, I'll distort the above for you."
Remember, don't you dare try to write your own software. Leave that to me. Then buy it from me
He does not write that. He is complaining about the widespread use of pirated software, an entirely legitimate complaint. If it is OK to violate his copyright and his license, wouldn't it also be OK to violate the copyright and license of authors who choose to release software under the GPL?
Software piracy does hurt the software industry. Products and technologies fail not due to technical shortcomings but rather the shallow pockets of the developers. Piracy destroys the little guy, not the guy with the deep pockets like Bill Gates.
A lot of DVDs made in Finland get region code 0. I can understand that (some noble but ultimately futile dreams on Finnish cinema getting big on foreign market, I guess =). But most of the DVDs don't seem to have CSS either, which kind of puzzles me.
I'm not familiar with how CSS licensing works for content authors, but maybe, maybe some Finnish producers said "hey, let's copy protect these things" and another producer said "well, that's not going to happen, have you seen what prices they're asking for that?" (that's just for the sake of argument, I guess in real life, it's more likely the other guy is saying "but that doesn't work anyway - why bother..." =)
The point is, if you're using DRM licensing fees to fend out "hobbyists", you're also likely fending out smaller players. In an analogy that hopefully makes it all clear (even when I think DRM in general is such a failure that it practically fails in this goal, too): what use, really, is a protection that is just intended to keep rich people richer and poor people poor?
I find it way too easy to replace "hobbyists" with "independent music producers" in that quote. And lock them out to benefit who? Organized Music? Almost certainly. MS wants to play nice with Big Music, get their content, and make a few more tens of billions in the process. Get government to close the so called "Analog Hole". Lock struggling producers out of a standard for DRM. Nothing here to hurt the big players at all. All this is just another reason why MS must die.
(As a company, you idiot lawyers.)
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Holds true for some values of "more" and "advance"
OTOH, if you factor out Mr. Softy, and just consider $800_pound_gorilla, I think a contrary case can be made that the positive network effect of $800_pound_gorilla has been substantial.
Consider CUA, or any other standard that has helped focus the market.
Somewhere between monoculture and chaos is a reasonable operating point.
So, a helpful question might be: how can we manage $800_pound_gorilla such that we minimize chaos without venturing into the Mordor of monoculture?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Is it just me or is it a little ironic for them to say this. I mean after all, didn't MS, along with most of the other modern computing giants, start as a couple of geek hobbyists in a garage somewhere? The Quest for Cash is getting a little beyond stupid these days. It is one thing to be cutthroat, unethical, and often illegal in business, but more and more the trends are following more along the lines of head in the sand, or pure insanity. At least when they are being cutthroat, unethical, and often illegal, they are a little more stable and predictable.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
The intention is to reduce the number of licensees to a manageable level, to lock out 'hobbyists' and other entities that Microsoft doesn't want to have to trouble itself with."
*BEEP* *BOP* *BOOP* CHICKACHICKACHICKA *ZIP* *BOOP*
Readout:
We write software! NOT YOU!
Now the major difference is these distributors have competition, but the only competetion to protected WMA/V DRM is Apple's FairPlay, which only Apple gets to use.
Also realize that, in effect, this is exactly what the DVD-CCA does. Only issues liscences to people who agree to play by their restrictive terms.
On a certain level MS probably also believes that their DRM will be cracked more easily/quickly if smaller, less "ethical" coders could get their hands on it. But it didn't do the DVD people much good. IIRC, DVD Jon was able to crack CSS after the cypher was anonymously leaked to him
Free MacMini
Whatever you may feel about DRM, Microsoft's position on the potential use of DRM is pretty clear - they believe, right or wrong, that consumers can have access to the best content if and only if that content can be protected.
Honestly, what would hobbyists do with a truly open DRM SDK for devices? The secure path audio only applies to media sources LEAVING the PC, not input sources, so it doesn't affect microphones, instruments and the types of devices that casual users might actually be developing. Hobbyists won't have the substantial financial backing to produce their own playback device. Any small company who has the desire and financial resources is going to have the cash to spend on this liscensing scheme, especially considering that Microsoft has always employed hefty discounts for small ISVs. This doesn't prevent hobbyists from working with DRM'd media streams on devices they purchased - if the device manufacturer liscensed the DRM from Microsoft (which it would have to, or you couldn't enjoy media on the device), then you can still use a healthy amount of the Windows Media SDK to work with media stream, limitted to some extent by the secure path, but that's a different gripe.
Given the financial difficulty of building a full device capable of full media playback, what would hobbyists do with an SDK that allowed raw access to protected content - most of them would write software the emulates a virtual device to circumvent the DRM. That's exactly what Microsoft is attempting to prevent.
Either way Bill Gates is lying. You can get free software that is well-maintained. The software developers may not be financially motivated, but they are motivated to improve the software AND keep it free. Whatever motivation it is that drives Free Software, if I were a capitalist I'd stop and think a moment about the factors that are motivating hundreds or thousands of computer scientists to give of their time freely. But since I'm not a capitalist I wouldn't spend any time trying to think of a way to exploit this, no, just admire, encourage and support it. Because its a good thing, unlike capitalism.
Microsoft says: don't try to write better drivers. Linux fan-base grows.
*** Don't be dull.***
And remember, it's the HOBBYISTS who've done more to advance computing than anything Microsoft has done to advance the state of software development in the world. (Linus Torvalds anyone?)
Linux didn't really advance computing, Linux is yet another reimplementation of Unix. AT&T advanced computing by developing Unix. I'm open to the idea of giving UC Berekeley some credit too, but we have the reimplementation issue as well. However Berkeley does deserve credit for it's open license, Linux's GPL license being a reimplementation of the the open distribution idea. Please don't misunderstand, I am not slamming Linux or minimizing the enormous efforts that went into it's development. Linux is an outstanding technical achievement, but it does not offer original ideas, it merely offers original source code.
I work in Developer Relations for a big wireless carrier, so this is close to my heart. While I've been a Mac user since 1985 ('nuff said), I do have a lot of respect of Microsoft when it comes to Developer Relations... they do know what they're doing in that area.I can understand the source of the Microsoft's VP's statement, although if his wording was close to what was paraphrased in the article, it was a poor choice of words.
If Microsoft is hoping to get real devices out there that include their DRM component, then what they're doing is putting up a barrier to entry to ensure that only those who are truly committed to building a mass-market product get the attention of internal staff so that MS can make money indirectly through devices that use and license the DRM component.
Whether or not that's a sound business practice is their decision to make. But it's not a unique model. If you want to release a game on PlayStation, Gamecube or XBox, you license the development kits from Sony, Nintendo or XBox. They do this because they're in a mass market and need to ensure that the companies they work with and who use their name are equipped for what happens when something succeeds massively or has major problems. Microsoft's approach for their DRM is no different--the only difference is that a VP went out and actually set realistic expectations for what it takes to be a developer for those platforms in a forum that pissed boingBoing off--enough of a commitment and a financial stake in the game to make sure that something useful comes out of all the work people put into it.
It's true that hobbyists are often the source of completely original, unexpected innovations, and any company that is serious about innovation encourages that. Developer programs that embrace this open themselves up to very new ideas. But let's make a clear distinction between encouraging hobbyists and the business drive behind encouraging real applications, services or devices that make money for a developer and the company that makes money from the platform.
Please don't get me wrong: I stay at my job managing a developer program because I love answering developer questions. I love helping someone out and seeing them succeed, particularly if they have a great idea and the nads to see it through. I also believe that developers should have as many tools freely available as they can have. Where I work, I always try to argue for making information, APIs and toolkits open and accessible to every developer. I often get into some very heated discussions with people who argue that we should only make this API or that piece of documentation available to existing partners because they don't want to deal with hobbyists--in fact, I'm actively lobbying for something like that as I type. I tell internal resistors that by staying closed off they're never going to hear of the new stuff, they'll only hear from the same people over and over again and they'll still have to deal with hobbyists. I also help hobbyists and independent developers figure out ways of selling their product without having to build a business relationship with MegaCorp and dealing with what can be a bureaucratic process.
Being on the support side of things, I also contend with the reality of this internal advocacy--I often have to guide hobbyists and amateurs who are dabbling and who can consume hours of my day while clearly showing me that they're very unlikely to actually come up with something that could be a marketable product even if they go it alone.
Hobbyists-cum-entrepreneurs often have very unrealistic expectations regarding what they need to do to succeed. Some hobbyists tend to consume an inordinate amount of time from a company's developer relations and business development staff and don't turn out something that can actually become a product--and honestly, my business is to get developers from idea to market. These things include adequate support staff, sales teams, marketing funds, technical acumen and enough wherewithal to deal with contract n
***Foucault is watching you..***
Ever since PS/2 fiasco, Microsoft backstabbing IBM on account of OS/2 and rise of Wintel trust, Microsoft was having the last word in design of PC hardware and controlled the evolution of PC.
It is still so, because, unfortunately, various Windows are still most ubiquituous, despite recent explosive proliferation of free OS's. I am certain they are cospiring to, using DRM as an excuse, lock free competition out, by bullying hardware vendors into ever tighter subjugation to themselves. In the end (and I suppose that is where MS is trying to get us), it may become illegal (under DMCA) to run non-MS OSes on latest, greatest and cheapest PC hardware. With IBM bailing out of PC hardware business, I don't see anyone with large back to cover for us.
Then, we'll have to make our own "free (as in free speech) hardware" (Wheee!!!) and it will get expensive, or have inferior performance. It depends of how deep are they going to dig to uproot us. What are we going to do if something at very basic level, i.e. memory chips or modules, get access control (lock) that will be illegal to circumvent? There are limits to practical avoidance. RMS was right in his insight that free OS is prerequisite for free software, but he had overseen that OS is not a basic layer of computing. Then again, at the time, hardware was far less "alive" and blackboxed then today and no one could predict that someday hardware could turn against its owner and side with some remote corporate bigbrother.
They are beyond selling to us what we can't do ourselves. Now it is preventing us from doing ourselves what they can sell to us. I feel like if the sky was closing each day a little bit more. And it is all caused by IP monopolies and creeping consent that someone has right to my money so if they don't take it from me, it's like I robbed them. Are we going to lay down and just die?
You know, I have to agree with this. I'm a bgi supporter and advocate for Free Software and Open Source Software. As such, I feel I have to be particularly careful about respect for IP and IP laws (even as I advocate for the change of those laws). Those same laws underpin the GPL, LGPL, BSD, and other licenses out there.
.NET development contract for instance), I am amazed at how annoying activation, keys, etc. are. I show everyone I can the alternatives and how hassle free they are.
Violating a shrink-wrap EULA is just as egregious as violating the GPL. If we wish to be strict about the one, we have to be strict about the other. I think with the increasing "DRM" and activiation models that the shrink-wrap software world is finally going to drive people to F/OSS. Why? Because they are starting to hassle and annoy their customers. Every time I am forced to use "that side" of the software world (when I get a
While I'm personally "dogmatic" about Free Software, I am not professionally. While the Free aspect may be the most important issue to me, it most often is not to a business. But I do evangelize. Where the Free option is as good or better, or even nearly as good, I try to make the case for it because of the "hidden" benefits of no BSA audit, keys, activation hassles.
There's some stuff for team development on the new Visual Studio that, in a sense, is little more than a neat bundling of the kinds of collaboration tools we've had in F/OSS for some time. But they've put in stuff for project management that I haven't seen in the Free world because we don't worry so much about resources and deadlines. (BTW, if people here know of such tools, I'd love to hear about them). This is an area where I think MS has jumped ahead in appealig to business. But I would expect to see similar features in platforms like Eclipse before much time goes by.
I'm not sure that that last isn't off-topic, but I offer it as an example of why a business might make the "wrong" choice for the right reasons...
I'm reminded of a movie called Revolution OS [revolution-os.com] which enlightened me to Gates' history with hobbyists.
Do you have a Torrent link for that movie? (j/k)
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
There once was a bus system called the Microchannel. In its age, it was revolutionary. Look it up, and be stunned by the opportunities this system presented. Remember, this was the age of ISA (Not even VLB, heck, not even EISA and faaaaar from PCI) cards.
It was good. Unlike the DRM junk, this was REALLY good. It only had one single flaw:
IBM threatened to execute patent rights. And the card manufacturers were afraid they couldn't actually make a buck with MCA cards after paying royalties to IBM for the patents.
So most of them, besides a few big players, went down the conservative road and decided it would be better to stick with ISA. It's slower, yes, it's limited, yes, but at least we can actually make a buck there.
Customers split up. Those who decided to stick with ISA, to be compatible with their old hardware, hardware they needed and was not available on MCA, and those who stood true to IBM and trusted them to create new line of hardware. The first group saw that they could get cheaper hardware, not only add-on cards but even the "main machine" from 3rd party vendors that are still compatible with their old ISA cards.
The other group went after the first when IBM decided to dump the Microchannel Architecture in the early 90s, leaving their customers with big investments that led into a dead end, forcing them to buy completely new hardware altogether as well. And understandably, they did not want to sink more money into IBM...
And the MCA, which was a great design, went away before it even started to fly. And marked one of the cornerstones of IBMs decline from THE computer company to ONE computer company today.
Let's hope DRM will be the same for MS.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Look around you.
Everyone is to busy hanging out at the mall, or spending their pocket money for ringtones and other junk. A "buy this!" generation is growing up, unable to do the most basic tasks by themselves.
In the 80s, people dumped video games for home computers. The slogan was "Why buy your kid a game when you can buy him something that gets him to college?"
That trend has already changed.
Today the slogan is more akin to "Why bother with operating systems and incompatible hardware when you can just slip in a DVD and play?"
We "old" people might even be able to do things ourselves. Our next generation won't be able to do anything by themselves unless it's part of their job. We already need repairmen for things our parents would've done themselves. Our kids will need assistance when it comes to upgrading their operating system...
Not because they're dumber. It's simply lazyness. We don't want to learn more than we have to to get by.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What you're writing is classic spin. You're inferring things from the article, nothing more, then stating your interpretations as facts.
The quotes you offer are nowhere near "smoking guns". Does he dislike hobbyists? Well, I think it's fairly clear he strongly dislikes the 'hobbyists' who are stealing his software. But then you twist that and put words into his mouth, such as "hobbyists cannot write good software". Correction: what he SAID was that he doesn't see how programmers can spend 3 years on their 'hobby' without making any money from it and still put out a quality product, with quality assurance, documentation and all. It's worth noting, too, that this was from a long time ago. Free software models did not exist then, and there weren't people willing to fund/sponsor hobbyist projects.
"He says he's the best at doing it:"
Sorry, the quote you give does not support that conclusion at all. He's just saying he invested a lot of money into it, and then many hobbyists take the fruit of that labor without paying the piper, as they say. I don't believe it'd be fair to sell software someone gave away for free without their permission, and conversely, I don't believe it's fair to give away software someone sells without their permission. Those who stole his software were not fair and respectful to Bill Gates, and he is justifiably (in my opinion) upset about that.
"Free software is bad because he can't make money:"
Again, spinning around and around. He said he wants to sell a product, and hire developers to make his product much better. However, his plan is somewhat hindered by the fact that most people are stealing, rather than purchasing, his software.
You know, I don't think Bill Gates is some great guy or anything, in fact, I do consider he's more about making the sale than providing a quality product; but at the same time I don't like to see people putting words in someone's mouth, which you most certainly are doing. Criticize him for what he actually did, or actually said, but not for what you think he meant to say.
If you truly feel it's fair to do this, then that is because you're the one on the giving end, not receiving. When someone puts words in YOUR mouth, I can assure you, you will not think it is very fair to you for someone to do so.
Whatever you may feel about DRM, Microsoft's position on the potential use of DRM is pretty clear - they believe, right or wrong, that consumers can have access to the best content if and only if that content can be protected.
By protection, you must mean lock out all but a few publishers. Why else limit who can make a player? This is an "our way or the highway" kind of admission. Yes, trying to control popular culture through outdated laws and bogus technology is wrong.
Given the financial difficulty of building a full device capable of full media playback, what would hobbyists do with an SDK that allowed raw access to protected content - most of them would write software the emulates a virtual device to circumvent the DRM. That's exactly what Microsoft is attempting to prevent.
Oh yeah, piracy is the only reason people would ever want to watch a movie. No it's not.
This is about a foolish attempt to control. People are going to make and distribute players for M$'s crappy formats with or without an SDK to help them. This issue will come to a head and hopefully overturn the dumber restrictions of the DMCA, which was passed before most people understood it's implications. More importantly, people are going to publish in alternative formats and economic forces will pull the whole scheme under.
The harder they push, the faster they lose. The "Works for Sure" devices are miserable. WM formats are also second rate and the adoption of both is just not going to happen.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
As a Mac user with a friendly relationship with Linux and BSD, I urge Microsoft to do precisely that.
Windows would be a locked Microsoft and Certified Vendors platform and as a result would both help those its really meant for: corporate users, by making their systems secure for a change; and would also help the rest of us by removing this monstrosity of a platform from the home hobbyist and gamer community outright.
Alas, MS will do no such thing. They learned at some point that the user wants a billlion different choices of crapware and was willing to pay for it with a whored box.
DRM for music and video players is a different arena. MS are playing a canny game there for the moment. Though have Apple to catch up to. Should be an entertaining fight.
All the hoobyists I know are more interested in removing DRM. Who wants to make their media less useful?
"it's the HOBBYISTS who've done more to advance computing"
If it wasn't for people like the HOBBYISTS who were hand wire-wrapping intel 8008's into S100 boards and their own TV Dazzler cards from articles in hobbyist magazines; IBM never would have made the PC which is now killing their profitable mainframe business and Billy Gates never would have had a platform to launch either DOS/Basic or Windows on. My first computer used an RCA 1802 CPU, was programmered by hand toggleing the machine code in byte by byte, and had a whopping 255 bytes of static ram memory; it taught me that a computer was something that a mere mortal could use. The concept that a computer could be used by normal people was pretty revolutionary.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
As I understand it the problem is that Microsoft has to validate submitted drivers to see that they follow the DRM rules and don't have any back doors to let content be extracted. This is a big job so they can't afford to do it for every driver that any person feels like submitting, opening themselves up to a sort of DOS attack. By charging a fee for submissions they limit their work to only people who are really serious about it, and shut out the merely curious and those who hate DRM and would try to monkey-wrench it.
Just replace 'hobbyists' with 'Open Source programmers' and you'll have what Billy boy is really saying. It's always about obstructing competition. Always.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
There may be another reason for restricting the developer set. Keep in mind that this isn't a general restriction, it's only in the area of DRM.
From what I remember, DVD CSS was cracked because one company used a weak key. That key was SO bad it was fairly easy to brute-force, and then there were more fundamental weaknesses that allowed them to extract the other keys, given the first one.
Had there never been a weak key, perhaps DVD John never would have gotten his 15 minutes of fame.
So perhaps this DRM developer restriction is to make sure that nobody makes a weak key, that they do a better job of educating this smaller set of developers.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
But thanks for playing.
My first 'OS' was GEOS (unless you count Commodore64 basic as an OS)
After that it was PC Dos (not MS Dos although I switched to that later)
THEN Windows OS/2, THEN Windows 95.
Microsoft wants companies to pay them if they plan on writing software that works on Windows. If they don't pay, they don't get a "certificate" from microsoft, and they intend for Windows to refuse to execute any software that doesn't have this special "certificate"?
This sounds conspicuously like "pay us a 'protection' fee so nothing 'bad' will happen".
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
> As such, I feel I have to be particularly careful about respect for IP and IP laws
:)
Please do not perpetuate the myth of IP. RMS is dead right on this one, ceeding the enemy control of the language will lose us the war. Yes I do respect Copyright, patent and Trademarks.... at least most of the time.
> Violating a shrink-wrap EULA is just as egregious as violating the GPL.
No it isn't. A shrink wrap EULA is meaningless unless you live in Virgina and perhaps not even there. A contract requires two parties and if I refuse to accept the EULA I'm still allowed to use the software by virtue of having purchased a copy of it. I don't believe allowing software publishers to impose one sided "contracts' you can't even read until you no longer have a right to get your money back is something worthy of even considering submitting to. To compare it to the GPL shows your ignorance of the difference between the two.
You are not required to accept the GPL either, btw. If you refuse it you may still use the copy you aquired in any way that is acceptable under the Copyright laws of your jurisdictiom. By accepting it you gain permission to redistribute the work subject to the terms and conditions of the GPL. Notice the difference between this and any EULA. All EULAs attempt to subtract rights otherwise granted under Copyright law.
Democrat delenda est
You probably use computers today specifically because of Microsoft Windows at some point in the past.
/.er...most certainly under 25 anyways...
Sorry, this is WRONG. By and large we use computers DESPITE using Microsoft Windows, not BECAUSE of it. Microsoft has always been a low-innovation company; it takes old ideas and finds new opportunities for them. Microsoft's very first product, BASIC for the MITS Altair, was an old idea brought into a new market space. Bill and Paul didn't invent BASIC, and didn't invent the OS. By the mid 70's writing a BASIC interpreter was a pretty garden-variety activity for enthusiastic hobbyists fortunate enough to have access to minicomputers. BillG is not a vrey good innovator, but he is a visionary of sorts and can spot unexploited opportunities.
Other innovatinos borrowed by Microsoft:
* Modern microcomputer architecture of BIOS and OS borrowed from Digital Research (BDOS and CP/M)
* Colour graphics (Cromemco(?) Dazzler card, Apple II, Atari 800 all before 1980)
* Mouse (Douglas Engelbart, 1964)
* Graphical User Interface (Xerox Alto in 1973, Apple Lisa in 1983)
* Web Browser (CERN WorldWideWeb, 1990 and NCSA Mosaic, 1993 - MSIE started off as a a re-branded/derivative version of this browser licensed from Spyglass Software--a firm trying to commercialise the academic project)
Microsoft was simply savvy enough to know how to bring these technologies to the masses and establish a dominant, standard platform. Standardisation--THAT is why we all use computers as much as we do today, NOT because MS makes such good software. I think that if we were all lucky enough to have companies that had both Microsoft's "vision" (business savvy, really) and Xerox/Digital Research/Apple/Atari/Commodore's talent for innovation that computing would be far more advanced and ubiquitous than it is today, because computers would actually "work".
It was likely your first operating system.
On this forum, likely NOT. My first exposure to computers was on a freinds TRS-80 CoCo (The original, silver, memory-challenged model 1), and on my school's Apple II (no plus, e, c or gs). The first OS I seriously used was CP/M 2.2. I remember when the lab for Jr/Sr high was upgraded from Commodore PETs to 8088 machines, with the brand-new MSDOS 2.11. Slashdotters are enthusiasts and generally got into computers as early as possible in their lives. If Windows was your first OS then (with a few exceptions) you are probably quite a young
WMA is chump change compared to Fairplay. Why isn't someone complaining that you can't license Fairplay for any price? Apple has a monopoly on audio DRM, at least a monopoly in the same sense that MS has a monopoly in the OS realm.
Vote for Pedro
The current generation of teens/(very) young adults is taking a step backwards as far as the amount of functional knowledge. Generation X will be looked upon by history as the high point of digital innovation. Gen X will be to network-driven innovation what the Apple II/C64 generation was to computer hardware development: the initial blossoming of innovation before the chilling onset of a corporate homogenization of methods and implementations (an ice age, if you will).
So many people honestly believe that they aren't complete morons for paying a dollar (or more) for a fucking ringtone! (And a ringtone that has terrible sound quality at that.) The current young generation's attitude towards learning is far more apathetic than gen X's. The prevailing attitude is, "Why should I learn about something when I can just google it on demand?"
What I think is really going to define the social dynamics of the Gen Y job market and society is a new kind of digital divide. Not the 'digital divide' that refers to some people not having access to technology. The real digital divide will be between those people who have made technology their masters (by refusing to actually learn anything - relegating knowledge to the machines - and elites), and those who instill in their children the importance of being the masters of technology. That will be the real digital divide.
This is the very same education ethic you refered to when you said Why buy your kid a game when you can buy him something that gets him to college? The difference will be that getting the access to the physical hardware isn't the barrier to success. It's going to be the inquisitive epiphany that "I should pull that compliance chip off my motherboard and figure out what's happening inside that $30 computer? After all, if the hardware's so cheap, what is it about computers that makes them the key to making a lot of money in the (idustrialized) world?"
And that epiphany is going to become something that is less and less spontaneous as companies like MS, Apple, Google, etc. start pumping more and more of their advertising budgets into building a "just use it - don't worry about how it works" culture.
argumentum ad fallacium: Fallacy of defining a fallacy which allows one to dismiss the argument in question.
There's competition now from the free software world.
Not if free software can't boot. Have you tried to run free software on a video game console without making modifications that are illegal in at least one major developed country? Even if free software is allowed to boot, it is likely not to be able to get an IP address because all the residential high-speed ISPs use Trusted Network Connect and only "trust" specific unmodified Microsoft and Apple operating systems. It could very well happen by 2015.
The developers will just go where they're welcome.
And if that no longer includes the Internet, then what happens?