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Should Microsoft Be Required To Extend Support For Windows XP?
An anonymous reader writes "If Windows XP were a photocopier, Microsoft would have a duty to deal with competitors who sought to provide aftermarket support. A new article in the Michigan Law Review argues that Microsoft should be held to the same duty, and should be legally obligated to help competitors who wish to continue to provide security updates for the aging operating system, even if that means allowing them to access and use Windows XP's sourcecode."
Photocopier vendors do not open the controller software up to competitors / vendors who provide support. They just give them specs for replacement parts. Do you force Apple to let 'competitors' support OS X 10.5 on G5 Macs? Do you force Google to let competitors still support Google Wave?
Nah just have copyright last for 14 years max.
Then Microsoft will have to actually build stuff significantly better than XP rather than disappointing stuff like Windows 8.
You think progress would be slow because the shortened/reduced monopolies would reduce investment into innovation? Well Microsoft has spent billions and what we got is stuff like Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8.
A shorter copyright term would definitely "help them focus" on innovating rather than extending or leveraging the reach of their existing monopolies don't you think?
I am a critic of M$ but I do not think they should be required by law.
Only in the case of some sort of long-term contract that is still in effect, that mentions specifically updating software until a time in the future...unless that is the case.
These laws are complex and the photocopier example is interesting.
I am against artificial scarcity for sure...that's one reason I hate M$...but I think this may cross the line. If M$ wants to let XP die then they have the right to refuse to make vital trade secret info available to people who want to keep it alive.
I have a feeling the photocopier example is more about purposefully creating artificial scarcity. It's not quite analogous b/c it's an actual machine not software.
I'm not giving M$ a pass. Its about property rights. If people love XP so much (i remember it was the only windows version i could really get work done using...would still choose it today) then the community will come up with a solution...which should be legal to give away for free.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Microsoft or any software company should be forced to provide full support for their commercial products for as long as they hold copyright over them.
Personally, I think they are going about this the wrong way. The Gov't should be sending Death Squads to kill all members of any household still running XP, or running any version of IE less than 10. Brutal? Maybe. But, boy will it do wonders for the social lives of us Web Developers.
It's 12 years old for crying out loud, let it die.
That's like arguing that Nokia should still be providing support and software upgrades for the 6100.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
I wish I was a neutron bomb, for once I could go off...
The case is based on false assumptions.
Microsoft still provide support for Windows XP to those who are willig to pay for it: http://arstechnica.com/informa...
Case closed.
MS is trying to push people off XP. There are other alternatives after all. Many of them are even free. How bad does it make Linux and Chrome look if they can't compete with an 12+ year old OS that MS is actively trying to push people off of?
it's a pretty easy barrier if enforced on _everyone_.
Supporting consumer grade software that is sold for ~$100 a time indefinitely, including providing full internal technical details to arbitrary additional parties, is a "pretty easy barrier"? I'm sorry, but that is absurd.
There are people in this discussion suggesting that someone who doesn't want to comply with such rules can go **** themselves and just give up on entering the US market. Well, guess what? They probably would. The burden imposed by this kind of requirement would almost certainly be prohibitive in cost. A vendor such as Microsoft would therefore do better to sacrifice the entire US market if it meant avoiding both an eternal unfunded mandate to support everything they ever sold and giving up their trade secrets to all their competitors.
There are also people in this discussion pointing out that other industries, such as automotive manufacture, involve a much higher level of safety standards and engineering approval. That is true, but cars typically cost 2-4 orders of magnitude more than commercial off-the-shelf software products, and they have working lifetimes that are probably shorter than Windows XP's 12+ years in many cases. Moreover, the auto manufacturers still aren't required to disclose the keys to the kingdom to the degree that is suggested here.
I'm all for developing good quality software, and if you're running a long-term software business then I think providing a reasonable degree of free-of-charge support to your existing customers is probably a good investment. But providing heavyweight support has a large cost, so unless you as a customer are willing either to regulate the industry and pay N times as much for your software purchases up-front or to pay the true cost of ongoing support via proper support contracts, I don't think it's realistic to expect that vendors will just cover that cost indefinitely out of their own pockets.
In fact, in the entire history of software development, that has almost never happened. Apple have released the first version of OS X around the same time as Microsoft released Windows XP, yet Apple have aggressively promoted numerous upgrades, most of which cost a significant amount of money, since that time, and somehow I suspect you'd have trouble getting full support for an original OS X system today. And to put this all in perspective Open Source darlings like Mozilla Firefox have "long term support" releases with lifetimes measured in months, not years. It's actually remarkable that Microsoft have offered free support to Windows XP for as long as they have, despite releasing not one but three successor generations of the product during that period.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
But two swing out of the realm of opinion, you compare Windows XP to "OpenSource darlings like firefox" whose long-term support is measured in "months, not years". This is a bad comparison.
Fair enough, though it wasn't really meant as a direct comparison, more an illustration of how much effort is required to support old software for extended periods.
A better comparison would be Ubuntu LTS which includes firefox and whose support is measured in years not months.
It is. In fact, the period is now five years for both desktop and server versions.
Again, just to put that in perspective, Windows 7 (two generations after Windows XP) was released around 4.5 years ago.
I think it would be a great idea to require Microsoft to "open up" even if it was outside of their interests. Hell if Windows 8 could not compete with community supported open source XP, it still means that people get better software :)
Well, it would be great, in the short term, for everyone except Microsoft. But who is going to build the next software product that is so successful that almost everyone uses it for nearly a decade in that world?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Supporting consumer grade software that is sold for ~$100 a time indefinitely, including providing full internal technical details to arbitrary additional parties, is a "pretty easy barrier"? I'm sorry, but that is absurd.
Microsoft does NOT have to support it indefinitely for free. However there is precisely zero obstacle to them supporting XP on an ongoing basis for a reasonable sum for those interested in paying for such support. Something like $50/year (times a few million users) should more than adequately cover the cost and provide Microsoft a reasonable profit. Microsoft could provide paid support AND make the upgrade path easier by doing so. However Microsoft has chosen to burn that bridge instead in an effort to force people to "upgrade" to software that they clearly are not interested in buying. Since they have elected to go down that route instead of providing paid support, it is reasonable that people are calling for alternatives including open sourcing it. I think a more pragmatic approach would be to sell the supporting XP business to a third party. But if all Microsoft is going to do is take their ball and go home then they can kiss my shiny metal ass.
Bear in mind that aside from security patches, Microsoft essentially provides ZERO support to most users of XP anyway. Not like I can call them up and get questions answered. Claims that continuing to support XP would be some enormous financial burden on the company are pretty absurd.
Moreover, the auto manufacturers still aren't required to disclose the keys to the kingdom to the degree that is suggested here.
Not really true. Almost everything worth protecting product-wise in the auto industry is patented so it is inaccurate to say they haven't disclosed the details. A company like GM could easily make a soup-to-nuts replica of a Toyota if they wanted to. There isn't much technology that is a big secret or that cannot be reverse engineered and the companies that supply it usually supply multiple firms. Software is VERY different than auto manufacturing though software is becoming a bigger piece of the industry as time goes on. (and yes I'm an engineer who has worked in the auto industry for years) The differences between auto companies are mostly in how they are structured and managed. The differences between the products themselves are fairly minor. Most auto companies (like GM and Ford) have supply chains that heavily overlap. An axle for Ford is very likely made in the same plant as an axle for GM and surprisingly often is engineered by many of the same people. My company assembles parts that go into a GM SUV and every component in that assembly we make can be purchased directly by you if you wanted to. (you'd just pay a LOT more than we do)