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Microsoft Patents the Crippling of Operating Systems
theodp writes "On Tuesday, Microsoft was granted US Patent No. 7,536,726 (it was filed in 2005) for intentionally crippling the functionality of an operating system by 'making selected portions and functionality of the operating system unavailable to the user or by limiting the user's ability to add software applications or device drivers to the computer' until an 'agreed upon sum of money' is paid to 'unlock or otherwise make available the restricted functionality.' According to Microsoft, this solves a 'problem inherent in open architecture systems,' i.e., 'they are generally licensed with complete use rights and/or functionality that may be beyond the need or desire of the system purchaser.' An additional problem with open architecture systems, Microsoft explains, is that 'virtually anyone can write an application that can be executed on the system.' Nice to see the USPTO rewarding Microsoft's eight problem-solving inventors, including Linux killer (and antelope killer) Joachim Kempin, who's been credited with getting Microsoft hauled into federal court on antitrust charges." Sounds like the mechanism by which Microsoft sells one version of Vista to all users, and lets users upgrade to higher-tier flavors of the OS after cash changes hands.
Does MS actually think that *anybody* who makes an OS would want to do this (that isnt currently doing it, like themselves and.. anybody else?)?
As far as I know, the only real competition for Windows is MacOS and Linux variants...
It just goes to show how completely out of touch with reality they really are.
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
This is different than demos/shareware how?
Digital Sailor
Or does this read like the venture into a modularized price structure for an Operating System.
You want to Install Windows? $50
You want to Boot Windows? Another $50
You want to Install Applications? That'll be $100
You want to play Blu-Ray? That'll be another $50
You want sound on your Blu-Ray movie? Cough up $35
You want to use your peripherals? (Camera, webcam, ipod, printer, scanner) That'll be $10 per peripheral
After all, even the synopsis says "making selected portions and functionality of the operating system unavailable to the user or by limiting the user's ability to add software applications or device drivers to the computer' until an 'agreed upon sum of money' is paid to 'unlock or otherwise make available the restricted functionality.'", who's to say they don't want to make a Windows Core available for some low price, then add Multimedia capability as a $200 add-on, or Gaming Pack for $150, maybe a Video/Sound Editing pack for $300, or a Small Business Suite for $300?
Reads to me like MS is gonna kick the consumer in the junk, then take their wallet
> 'they are generally licensed with complete use rights and/or functionality that may be beyond the need or desire of the system purchaser.'
If the functionality is beyond the purchaser's need or desire, why do you need to lock it away from them? If they have to pay you extra for that functionality, doesn't that imply that they really did need and desire those rights or functionality.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Although I have no problem with Microsoft holding a monopoly on this sort of "innovation", commercial operating systems have always had different levels of functionality that can be enabled or disabled. Sun's UNIX, for example, had a very complex set of rights to run compilers, debuggers, specify the number of CPUs, and otherwise limit the available features or products that could run, with many different types of licensing schemes (e.g. number of simultaneous users).
Now, maybe the MS patent details some particularly clever method of validating usage, or changing allowed usage, but this type of thing is definitely not new.
Remember the IBM mainframes where you "upgraded" your hardware to have more disk space or memory by the Customer Engineer flipping a switch?
It's amazing how much money and effort has been spent on making products do less for the customer, and making them less reliable in the process. Wouldn't we all be better off if all that had been used to produce systems that worked better? Instead of HDTV sets that can't display high-resolution images from your computer because it doesn't have the right version of HDMI, they could have actually improved the quality and decreased the price, all because we can't solve the free rider problem in a more elegant fashion. My TV set won't pass on the full digital audio from my Blu-Ray player's HDMI output to my amp, it downsamples it to PCM stereo, even though the Blu-Ray player is happy to send a full resolution optical digital audio stream to that same amp. It isn't a problem with the TV, it happily sends 5-channel audio to the amp from digital broadcasts. It's so stupid that we have to put up with this garbage all so one industry can maximize profits.
Oh totally. Until I started working in an enterprise 4 years ago, I had no idea how big of an industry there is for ripping off large companies.
* $1500 for a 500GB SATA2 hard drive
* $60,000/year for a search engine
* About the same for a web analysis program
* $1,000,000 for a 40TB SAN
* $6000 for a KVM that sucks and $100 a dongle.
And that's not even getting into what I've seen the Windows admins go through.
they may not realize it, but they've really taken one for the team then. if they've got a patent on it, and they stay as greedy as they've always been, nobody else will be safe trying to pull the same stunt. up side: microsoft does something good for once down side: they didn't mean it that way
Is that:
Microsoft Patents [the act of] (Crippling Operating Systems)
or
(Microsoft Patents) [are] Crippling Operating Systems
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Why is that relevant? It's not "prior art" if it's not available publicly. Disclosed to employees under employment contracts: not public. Disclosed in a closed beta where all participants sign NDA's: not public. Released in an open beta: public (I think). Released for sale: public. Documented on external website: public.
You don't need to delay development to after you submit the patent. In fact, you aren't supposed to - theoretically, you must be able to show that your idea works before getting the patent, which means implementing it first.
(This doesn't mean I agree with the patent, merely that the application must precede public availability or discussion on the topic, which it seems to meet.)
This concept is extremely old.
Used both for shareware and demos which could be unlocked via key.
Dont see why it should be patentable just because its now used in an os.