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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.
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 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.
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...
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.
> 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
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!
This isn't news, nor is it some grand conspiracy.
Actually, it is. A monopolist has partnered with two cartels and all three of them have been convicted of illegally abusing their market positions. They are partnering to build an artificial barrier to entry in the convergence of their markets and to leverage their existing position to gain an advantage in new markets. This is most definitely a conspiracy and it is news. Here's a hint. It is illegal to use a monopoly to gain an advantage in other markets or to build barriers to entry to those markets. MS has partnered to do just that, implementing software restrictions to provide some parties with a market advantage using their monopoly on desktop OSs.
When pricing a product, you typically want to set a minimum price specifically for the purpose of eliminating the deadbeat/hobbyist factor.
Since when is an artificial restriction on use a "product?"
If the majority of your customers are businesses, they won't blink at a couple-hundred bucks for a product.
And you think that makes it ok or something? MS has a monopoly and they are using that monopoly to collect an additional toll from developers in the separate software application market. That is illegal.
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..***
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.
Slashdot is mostly a gathering point for news found elsewhere. If you follow the Register, BoingBoing, HardOCP, and a few other sites, you'll see almost everything before it hits slashdot.
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.
> 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
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.