Microsoft Forces Shutdown of Autopatcher

kaufmanmoore writes "Posts on Neowin and Autopatcher's site announce Microsoft has forced the closure of the Autopatcher download section. Details are scarce as to the exact reason for the take down after over 4 years of availability, but an official from Microsoft legal says that it has nothing to do with Windows Genuine Advantage. Goodbye to another useful tool that helped sysadmins apply Microsoft's numerous patches."

Comments

WindizUpdate next?

[Aggrajag]

So are they going to shut down WindizUpdate next as it is a lot more useful that Windowsupdate has ever been. Then again maybe the patches are downloaded from Microsoft's servers but I'm not sure.

Are the patch installers still available?

[LordSnooty]

Autopatcher was really just a front end to all the official MS one-off hotfix exes. If those files are still available, why not adapt the frontend to grab those files from MS instead? Hell, the least MS could do is take on the tech and offer it to their customers with a free WGA check thrown in. Because it was so much easier even for home users with say two machines to update at home, plus mum & dad's, and that one they built for their pal.

Torrents for August release plz?

Microsoft is immune to bad press

[rbanzai]

Microsoft is so large and its userbase so enormous that no amount of bad press can affect them. Anything short of eating live babies would not impact them in the slightest.

Shutting down Autopatcher is nothing to them and will not affect their business in even a negligible fashion.

I would like to think otherwise but I can't. They are unstoppable.

Re:How 'bout getting that in writing next time?

[quantum bit]

I have noticed at least one hotfix that's not normally publicly available, but was included with autopatcher. You know, the ones where you go to the KB article and it describes the exact symptoms you're seeing, and when you scroll down to download the patch it says something like:

"We don't think this is a major problem, and people who are having it are obviously too dumb to realize that it's somehow their own fault. Therefore, in order to get this patch, you'll have to call our support line where we will bill you outrageous fees in order to tell you whether you really need the patch or not."

Fortunately, the one I was looking for just happened to be included with autopatcher somehow, so I extracted the file and sure enough it fixed the problem.

Terrific. How long before they break even that?

[Erris]

offline update is terrific; its basically a script that wgets the patches directly from Microsoft,

The geinous of M$ can not be understated. Rather than let people share the burden of distributing their "patches" (efficiently)they will make everyone go to them. We have just seen how well they do at an easier task.

It won't be long before they only allow "authenticated" clients to download.

The contrast between this and the free software world could not be greater. Every gnu/linux distro has been easy to keep up today for the last ten years and there are verified mirrors everywhere. When you download a package from a mirror, you can md5 sum check it against the original source and most package managers do this automatically. M$ on the other hand, won't even let you distribute what they consider "free". Be wary when someone from M$ advocates BSD, love of your freedom is not the reason for their advice.