Yes, and if the police were investigating you on their own look out, that's one thing. This is about a mayor who has told the police to investigate someone for something he new wasn't a crime.
It's not so much harassment by the police as it is harassment by the mayor, which is pretty much unacceptable in any state.
Don't get me wrong, there are lots of frivilous law suits out there, but how is this one?
A web designer created a web link to the main site of a public, government institution. The city then issued her with a cease and desist order and began a police investigaton againt this person. This is patently wrong, and is behaviour which needs to be discouraged.
The fact that they withdrew the order later is really beside the point. A police investigation when the person instigating it knows(and TFA pretty clearly shows he did know) that it is baseless and illegal is intimidation.
The fact that this woman may or may not have undesirable political and/or racist opinions doesn't really matter. It wouldn't even matter if she's the second coming of Hilter(queue Godwin), using the police to intimidate or harrass someone who hasn't done anything wrong is illegal, immoral, and unconstitutional, and saying "Oops we're sorry" when you get caught doesn't get you off the hook.
It would have been a slightly different situtation if she was attempting to incite violence, or using the link in some other non protected way, but there seems to be absolutely no indication that this is the case(I'm not entirely sure how you could incite violence against a web address in the first place).
She ought to sue, she ought to win, and the idiots who ordered this ought to be out on the street. The fact that's she appears to be a racist redneck fool doesn't change any of that.
Yes, my point is that OpenGL is already irrelevant, so the fact that it may become irrelevant in the future is really rather immaterial.
My machine language course in University was MIPS/RISC, and while a few more systems are using that now, it was pretty irrelevant then.
So long as the general approach to rendering doesn't change it won't matter all that much, and there will always be a cheap, but largely inadequate and irrelevant system for students to work with.
Well this is actually a really good point, because this is precisely what's been wrong with the RIAA/MPAA/BIAA licensing model.
If, as they say you are purchasing a license to play media off them, then you should be able to get a replacement cd/dvd/vhs tape for nothing more than the cost of shipping + media(some companies will actually do this for games/software).
After all, all you bought was a license, so the media ought not to matter. You should also by this same logic be able to play your music, video, game, etc from any medium whatsoever because well you didn't pay for the medium you paid for the license.
If a system as the GP suggests existed, then, presuming that the price was what the market was willing to bear, their whole "it's a license" thing might actually be viable. The problem has always been that they want to have their cake and eat it to. They want to sell you a license, but make it non-transferrable, non-replaceable, and basically for all intents and purposes exactly like a physical product.
Unfortunately, for a number of reasons, OpenGL is already relatively irrelevant.
If it weren't, linux gaming wouldn't be in the situation that it is.
DirectX is better established, better run, and better performing.(Some of this is because Microsoft didn't upgrade versions of OpenGL for a long time, but a lot of it is the fact that the OpenGL folks, like most standards bodies, spend so much time deciding on anything whatsoever that they get left in the dust).
If what this guy is suggesting becomes the case, rather than forcing every little guy out of the market, it might break the back of DirectX(which given that it's established, well known, and at the moment actually superior) which might mean more portable games, which would of course be good for Linux, Apple and everyone else.
Yes, but you were working for a company that doesn't believe in job descriptions. They exist, many of them, and sometimes they're good employers.
They wanted you to fix the system, they didn't care if "fixing" meant writing new code or "fixing" old code. From their perspective it's the same thing. You presumably had the skillset to have done the development(can't see how you can debug code you couldn't write).
The fact that you were authorized to do a code audit by your job title is really rather immaterial. They didn't want a code audit, they wanted you to fix their problem, they fired you because you didn't.
You had the choice to fix their problem or quit, instead you did a code audit to show that someone they'd probably asked to fix the code had fixed the code.
Your company was a little cowboy it happens, when you find it and you don't like it quit.
it's probably not exactly what you're looking for, and it probably won't be terribly lucrative(though there's nothing that will actually give you something lucrative if you're not willing to allocate reliable time to it(almost no one will pay you to do stuff when you feel like it)).
That said, if I were you I'd learn how to do some home maintenance stuff. You can make some money doing it(if you're licensed etc), and more importantly you can save some money on fixing up your home.
Beyond that, dream on, there's almost nothing you can do that remotely that isn't IT, which you don't want, and there's not much you can make money on if you're not willing to spend time doing it.
Yes, but we're not talking about the fact that the linux people will use IE, we're talking about someone who boots up something like Ubuntu, tries to surf the web and it doesn't work.
Or someone who hears about someone who did the same thing.
Mozilla's reputation is more than just it's linux version, it's all versions.
They didn't fire you because you were the smoking gun, no one gives a rats ass about the smoking gun and in all reality whoever had been doing the coding was probably told to by management and just didn't have the paperwork.
They fired you because instead of doing the job they wanted you to do, you spent your time(which they were paying you for) doing a code audit.
Was it a shit job, probably, did they hire you to do something you hadn't intended to do, also probably. That said they canned your ass because instead of saying, "I'm sorry this isn't what I signed up for" and quitting you acted like a dick and did something they hadn't asked for and didn't want.
If you're talking about a basic competency test(ie what is ethernet, etc) then you're right no one else has to do them and if you've got the relevant experience then it's an insult.
However if you're talking about the tests which determine an applicants personality type, or determine if their capable of thinking in the right way, then a lot of professionals have to take them, including though not exclusively, engineers, marketing types, and a lot of other people.
They can be a really good interview tool as they can allow you to determine whether a person is a good fit for your organization(at least in theory) and also pick out people who have potential.
You also have to remember that, while doctors, lawyers, etc don't have take competency tests, they also have certifying bodies, you can't be a lawyer without the bar association saying that you can be a lawyer, ditto with doctors. IT does't have this(there are some certifications, but a lot of people who are qualified don't have them and a lot of people who aren't do.
Might I point out that if the OpenSSL people did the same thing that Mozilla does a whole bunch of certificates wouldn't have been insecure for two years and wouldn't have had to be recreated at what is likely great expense.
For better or worse, when a company releases a product, even when it's open source. That company takes the blame/credit for the program. When people make unauthorized changes they can make things better, but they can also(as evidenced by the ssl situation) make things worse.
Mozilla doesn't really care if you redistribute firefox under whatever name you want to call it, and they don't really care if you use the gecko rendering engine in whatever you want to use it in.
What they do care about is their brand and their image, because, when you're working as close to the end user as they are, that perception matters.
Pretty much everyone who knew about the OpenSSL issue in debian knew why it happened and who to blame, that's because people who know how certificates work, also tend to understand that sort of thing.
The users of things like web browsers don't always have that kind of technical knowledge. If Debian, or Ubuntu, or anyone else for that matter modifies Firefox and cocks it up(as they're obviously capable of doing, see openssl) then the Mozilla Foundation and Firefox take the blame. That means fewer people use Firefox, and more people use IE.
You can bet that chrome will have exactly the same requirements because Google's brand name is even more valuable than Mozilla's.
To sum up, this isn't about your ability to share, modify, do whatever you want to the code(you still have that right), it's about you not being able to screw up and cause damage to the Mozilla Foundation's reputation.
That reputation is obviously worth something or folks like Ubuntu and Debian wouldn't be agreeing to the license, and so as that reputation has a value, Mozilla quite understandably wants to protect it.
I think the issue is more of the fact that who you are now and who you were are not always the same thing.
When I was in university some years ago I got myself quite pickled and I'm sure there are some photos(none online to the best of my knowledge) still floating around that show this.
At the age of 19/20 I was somewhat irresponsible and I drank quite a bit.
At the age of 27 I rarely drink, and am a completely different person.
I'm still friends with a lot of the same people as I was when I was an idiot, but they're no longer idiots either. That does't of course mean that we don't reminisce occasionally about our uni days, or that photos from that time will never crop up.
I was one of his constituents(had to move out of the country to get a job), Wisconsin has pretty decent senators. Herb has always been a pretty decent guy, and Feingold was the only senator to vote against the PATRIOT act, even if he only voted against it because he thought they ought to actually read it first.
Well some of that stuff is important too, the steak does need a little sizzle or no one will use it, and if no one uses it then the company just wasted a lot(if you're lucky) of money on your salary.
In the old style multi-tabbed environments(Firefox, Opera), if one tab crashes, all tabs crash. That's fine if all you're looking at is web pages, because both of those browsers can pull you back up to where you were page wise. But in the era of AJAX and responsive web applications, just reloading the page with your previous session settings isn't enough, because it won't be the way you left it.
IE has been able to create separate process for each instance of the browser for quite some time(mostly because internet explorer and explorer used to share code and crashing one would crash the other which wasn't good), but until IE 8/Chrome it hasn't been done for tabs before.
The upshot of this is that if one of your tabs misbehaves, theoretically your other tabs ought to be fine, the downside is that it means that each tab uses significantly more resources than it would otherwise because state which would otherwise be shared amongst all tabs has to exist for each and every tab.
So basically yes, page complexity is what is causing this to be necessary, but no it's not what is creating the actual increase in resource consumption. I also agree that ditching complexity wherever possible is a good thing(flash,javascript,etc where you don't need it is just plain silly), but rich web applications are a good thing and they're here to stay.
Well Opera is a commercial product in addition to a free one and folks buy their product in certain arenas where the fact that it's really light and really fast.
For Microsoft the issue is really about what role the OS plays. For a long time Microsoft tried to shaft the web, probably because they thought that if they could stagnate the web they could hold onto people needing their OS.
Now of course they've realized that web apps are coming no matter what they do, and if their product can't run them then people will go elsewhere and actively encouraging them to do so is silly.
As for google, there are a number of possible reasons, but mostly they have to do with the fact that google wants to diversify from search and that means web applications and having a browser out there that runs them well will both give them something to guarantee their stuff runs, and also encourage their competitors.
Part of the reason they've BSD licensed all their code is because they want everyone to use it. Google couldn't be happier than if Microsoft incorporated their new javascript engine into IE because if it's genuinely faster it means that people will be able to run whatever new web app they develop better.
AOL can ban you from communicating on its servers for pretty much anything they want to ban you for, because you're using their servers.
Most of the other EULA's(barring the one about google keeping stuff forever, which they can probably do so long as they don't distribute it) are totally unreasonable clauses for aggressive use.
The google ones are mostly to cover their own asses in case you put a google doc , or youtube video up and publish it to the world and then sue them for sharing your data.
If they ever tried to profit from it they'd get sued, and the court would look at their contract provision and laugh.
I can write a contract wherein you promise your first-born child, but no court anywhere were slavery is illegal(if slavery is legal then it's a contract for the exchange of goods which is legal) will uphold it.
A contract doesn't make it so, and onerous conditions have to be worded very very carefully(which is why so very few non compete agreements can be enforced).
Because the reason Microsoft has as many customers as they do is because they don't cull all the old crap. One of the advantages of being a minor player(and one of the reasons for remaining one) is that you can tell customers you don't like to rack off and blame the competition.
Ironically if Microsoft ever made a really good operating system they'd lose all their customers to Linux and close down, because if you're going to go through all the trouble of rewriting your application you may as well do it for something cheaper.
So you've been dealing with SBC have you? They were always very nice people, but their internet and phone divisions seemed to exist on separate planets speaking separate languages and a penalty of death for anyone on either side who even thought about talking to anyone on the other.
IANAL, but I do live in the real world, and this doesn't mean what people are claiming it does because there's no way for it to be enforced.
In order for google to even have any idea, let alone prove, what it has this royalty free license to, everything chrome displays would have to be either proxied through google, or have a copy sent to google. This would be prohibitive in the sense that even Google doesn't have that kind of bandwidth and server space to dedicate to something with no revenue stream, and because someone would have seen it happening by now.
I'd be willing to bet it's can't be enforced. EULA's are pretty questionable legally as it is, and even if this sort of thing was in a written contract signed in blood, the courts would probably toss it out as being unreasonable. Most of the stuff which gets rendered in a browser the person using the browser doesn't even have the right to grant license to in the first place, and no judge is going to find that displaying something in a browser is a reasonable cause for this result
Google are neither stupid nor suicidal. Actually trying to enforce something like this would be disastrous for their ad revenue and despite all their clever ideas Google does't have any other revenue.
I could be wrong, google could be trying for the most audacious evil in known history, but I sort of doubt it. Even when applied to Google's services all it is is an attempt to cover their asses legally. In order to have a file on flickr google has to be able to show it to people(because that's what flickr does) and so google has to have a license to do so.
Personally I'm kind of happy to have it. Partially because for initial testing it seems pretty snappy(I'm not sure if I like the tabs up top, or the missing status bar, and it's sure going to need a lot of plug-ins to get firefox off my PC), but mostly because for better or worse my work development PC is a windows box(my server isn't but that's beside the point). Testing webkit on windows is somewhat difficult because windows safari is a piece of crap. I'd much rather test in this.
The bigger issue with the web isn't so much extensions(AJAX only works because of a non standard extension that has since become standard).
The problem is more the fact that implementations aren't standard, and of course that IE stagnated on adding and improving features.
Clever ideas will eventually be adopted by other browsers, and that's a good thing. Developers can code around those features that don't exist in all browsers, so that their pages degrade gracefully. That's all part of being a developer.
The problem is when doing something that is supported by different platforms results in different things, because that means that you have to code normal things differently.
The biggest problem with Windows is backwards compatibility.
Microsoft has to play in the real world and that means being able to run some shitty app that was written back in the 16 bit days that some company can't live without and won't pay to get rewritten. That means maintaining code that shouldn't exist anymore, allowing "features" that should really have been bugs to continue to operate, and generally maintaining an increasing level of code bloat with every release.
Linux, for the most part, doesn't have that problem because they don't have to play in the real world and so they get to say "screw you" and remove badly coded legacy crap and let anything that depends on it die.
Theoretically this works because all the software is supposed to be open source and people can just fix it(though of course a lot of companies can fix those 16 bit apps too because they own them), but mostly it works because people don't use Linux anywhere where that sort of thing matters.
Look at how much flack Microsoft took for the changes they made in vista and all the stuff that broke, and that doesn't even come close to clearing out all the crap they could have culled.
In the real world people won't change their OS if their app doesn't work/isn't supported on the new version. This applies to linux as well as to Windows, and every other OS that exists or has ever existed.
We still have some NT boxes where I work because some of the software used in that area won't run on anything newer, and so long as they can still find licenses and hardware it can run on they'll continue to do so because changing it would be too expensive(even if they had the source).
If Microsoft got to cull out all the terrible stuff they'd done the way that Linux does it'd run a lot faster and a lot cleaner, and a lot safer, but they can't, so their software is slow, bloated, and buggy.
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It's not so much harassment by the police as it is harassment by the mayor, which is pretty much unacceptable in any state.
A web designer created a web link to the main site of a public, government institution. The city then issued her with a cease and desist order and began a police investigaton againt this person. This is patently wrong, and is behaviour which needs to be discouraged.
The fact that they withdrew the order later is really beside the point. A police investigation when the person instigating it knows(and TFA pretty clearly shows he did know) that it is baseless and illegal is intimidation.
The fact that this woman may or may not have undesirable political and/or racist opinions doesn't really matter. It wouldn't even matter if she's the second coming of Hilter(queue Godwin), using the police to intimidate or harrass someone who hasn't done anything wrong is illegal, immoral, and unconstitutional, and saying "Oops we're sorry" when you get caught doesn't get you off the hook.
It would have been a slightly different situtation if she was attempting to incite violence, or using the link in some other non protected way, but there seems to be absolutely no indication that this is the case(I'm not entirely sure how you could incite violence against a web address in the first place).
She ought to sue, she ought to win, and the idiots who ordered this ought to be out on the street. The fact that's she appears to be a racist redneck fool doesn't change any of that.
My machine language course in University was MIPS/RISC, and while a few more systems are using that now, it was pretty irrelevant then.
So long as the general approach to rendering doesn't change it won't matter all that much, and there will always be a cheap, but largely inadequate and irrelevant system for students to work with.
If, as they say you are purchasing a license to play media off them, then you should be able to get a replacement cd/dvd/vhs tape for nothing more than the cost of shipping + media(some companies will actually do this for games/software).
After all, all you bought was a license, so the media ought not to matter. You should also by this same logic be able to play your music, video, game, etc from any medium whatsoever because well you didn't pay for the medium you paid for the license.
If a system as the GP suggests existed, then, presuming that the price was what the market was willing to bear, their whole "it's a license" thing might actually be viable. The problem has always been that they want to have their cake and eat it to. They want to sell you a license, but make it non-transferrable, non-replaceable, and basically for all intents and purposes exactly like a physical product.
If it weren't, linux gaming wouldn't be in the situation that it is.
DirectX is better established, better run, and better performing.(Some of this is because Microsoft didn't upgrade versions of OpenGL for a long time, but a lot of it is the fact that the OpenGL folks, like most standards bodies, spend so much time deciding on anything whatsoever that they get left in the dust).
If what this guy is suggesting becomes the case, rather than forcing every little guy out of the market, it might break the back of DirectX(which given that it's established, well known, and at the moment actually superior) which might mean more portable games, which would of course be good for Linux, Apple and everyone else.
They wanted you to fix the system, they didn't care if "fixing" meant writing new code or "fixing" old code. From their perspective it's the same thing. You presumably had the skillset to have done the development(can't see how you can debug code you couldn't write).
The fact that you were authorized to do a code audit by your job title is really rather immaterial. They didn't want a code audit, they wanted you to fix their problem, they fired you because you didn't.
You had the choice to fix their problem or quit, instead you did a code audit to show that someone they'd probably asked to fix the code had fixed the code.
Your company was a little cowboy it happens, when you find it and you don't like it quit.
That said, if I were you I'd learn how to do some home maintenance stuff. You can make some money doing it(if you're licensed etc), and more importantly you can save some money on fixing up your home.
Beyond that, dream on, there's almost nothing you can do that remotely that isn't IT, which you don't want, and there's not much you can make money on if you're not willing to spend time doing it.
Or someone who hears about someone who did the same thing.
Mozilla's reputation is more than just it's linux version, it's all versions.
They fired you because instead of doing the job they wanted you to do, you spent your time(which they were paying you for) doing a code audit.
Was it a shit job, probably, did they hire you to do something you hadn't intended to do, also probably. That said they canned your ass because instead of saying, "I'm sorry this isn't what I signed up for" and quitting you acted like a dick and did something they hadn't asked for and didn't want.
However if you're talking about the tests which determine an applicants personality type, or determine if their capable of thinking in the right way, then a lot of professionals have to take them, including though not exclusively, engineers, marketing types, and a lot of other people.
They can be a really good interview tool as they can allow you to determine whether a person is a good fit for your organization(at least in theory) and also pick out people who have potential.
You also have to remember that, while doctors, lawyers, etc don't have take competency tests, they also have certifying bodies, you can't be a lawyer without the bar association saying that you can be a lawyer, ditto with doctors. IT does't have this(there are some certifications, but a lot of people who are qualified don't have them and a lot of people who aren't do.
For better or worse, when a company releases a product, even when it's open source. That company takes the blame/credit for the program. When people make unauthorized changes they can make things better, but they can also(as evidenced by the ssl situation) make things worse.
Mozilla doesn't really care if you redistribute firefox under whatever name you want to call it, and they don't really care if you use the gecko rendering engine in whatever you want to use it in.
What they do care about is their brand and their image, because, when you're working as close to the end user as they are, that perception matters.
Pretty much everyone who knew about the OpenSSL issue in debian knew why it happened and who to blame, that's because people who know how certificates work, also tend to understand that sort of thing.
The users of things like web browsers don't always have that kind of technical knowledge. If Debian, or Ubuntu, or anyone else for that matter modifies Firefox and cocks it up(as they're obviously capable of doing, see openssl) then the Mozilla Foundation and Firefox take the blame. That means fewer people use Firefox, and more people use IE.
You can bet that chrome will have exactly the same requirements because Google's brand name is even more valuable than Mozilla's.
To sum up, this isn't about your ability to share, modify, do whatever you want to the code(you still have that right), it's about you not being able to screw up and cause damage to the Mozilla Foundation's reputation.
That reputation is obviously worth something or folks like Ubuntu and Debian wouldn't be agreeing to the license, and so as that reputation has a value, Mozilla quite understandably wants to protect it.
When I was in university some years ago I got myself quite pickled and I'm sure there are some photos(none online to the best of my knowledge) still floating around that show this.
At the age of 19/20 I was somewhat irresponsible and I drank quite a bit.
At the age of 27 I rarely drink, and am a completely different person.
I'm still friends with a lot of the same people as I was when I was an idiot, but they're no longer idiots either. That does't of course mean that we don't reminisce occasionally about our uni days, or that photos from that time will never crop up.
I was one of his constituents(had to move out of the country to get a job), Wisconsin has pretty decent senators. Herb has always been a pretty decent guy, and Feingold was the only senator to vote against the PATRIOT act, even if he only voted against it because he thought they ought to actually read it first.
Well some of that stuff is important too, the steak does need a little sizzle or no one will use it, and if no one uses it then the company just wasted a lot(if you're lucky) of money on your salary.
Depends what kind of portal you're building really. Most external ones are pretty crap, internal enterprise ones not so much.
Having an application that responds to user input is a totally different thing than having a lot of sizzle and no steak.
In the old style multi-tabbed environments(Firefox, Opera), if one tab crashes, all tabs crash. That's fine if all you're looking at is web pages, because both of those browsers can pull you back up to where you were page wise. But in the era of AJAX and responsive web applications, just reloading the page with your previous session settings isn't enough, because it won't be the way you left it.
IE has been able to create separate process for each instance of the browser for quite some time(mostly because internet explorer and explorer used to share code and crashing one would crash the other which wasn't good), but until IE 8/Chrome it hasn't been done for tabs before.
The upshot of this is that if one of your tabs misbehaves, theoretically your other tabs ought to be fine, the downside is that it means that each tab uses significantly more resources than it would otherwise because state which would otherwise be shared amongst all tabs has to exist for each and every tab.
So basically yes, page complexity is what is causing this to be necessary, but no it's not what is creating the actual increase in resource consumption. I also agree that ditching complexity wherever possible is a good thing(flash,javascript,etc where you don't need it is just plain silly), but rich web applications are a good thing and they're here to stay.
For Microsoft the issue is really about what role the OS plays. For a long time Microsoft tried to shaft the web, probably because they thought that if they could stagnate the web they could hold onto people needing their OS.
Now of course they've realized that web apps are coming no matter what they do, and if their product can't run them then people will go elsewhere and actively encouraging them to do so is silly.
As for google, there are a number of possible reasons, but mostly they have to do with the fact that google wants to diversify from search and that means web applications and having a browser out there that runs them well will both give them something to guarantee their stuff runs, and also encourage their competitors.
Part of the reason they've BSD licensed all their code is because they want everyone to use it. Google couldn't be happier than if Microsoft incorporated their new javascript engine into IE because if it's genuinely faster it means that people will be able to run whatever new web app they develop better.
AOL can ban you from communicating on its servers for pretty much anything they want to ban you for, because you're using their servers.
Most of the other EULA's(barring the one about google keeping stuff forever, which they can probably do so long as they don't distribute it) are totally unreasonable clauses for aggressive use.
The google ones are mostly to cover their own asses in case you put a google doc , or youtube video up and publish it to the world and then sue them for sharing your data.
If they ever tried to profit from it they'd get sued, and the court would look at their contract provision and laugh.
I can write a contract wherein you promise your first-born child, but no court anywhere were slavery is illegal(if slavery is legal then it's a contract for the exchange of goods which is legal) will uphold it.
A contract doesn't make it so, and onerous conditions have to be worded very very carefully(which is why so very few non compete agreements can be enforced).
Ironically if Microsoft ever made a really good operating system they'd lose all their customers to Linux and close down, because if you're going to go through all the trouble of rewriting your application you may as well do it for something cheaper.
So you've been dealing with SBC have you? They were always very nice people, but their internet and phone divisions seemed to exist on separate planets speaking separate languages and a penalty of death for anyone on either side who even thought about talking to anyone on the other.
I could be wrong, google could be trying for the most audacious evil in known history, but I sort of doubt it. Even when applied to Google's services all it is is an attempt to cover their asses legally. In order to have a file on flickr google has to be able to show it to people(because that's what flickr does) and so google has to have a license to do so.
Personally I'm kind of happy to have it. Partially because for initial testing it seems pretty snappy(I'm not sure if I like the tabs up top, or the missing status bar, and it's sure going to need a lot of plug-ins to get firefox off my PC), but mostly because for better or worse my work development PC is a windows box(my server isn't but that's beside the point). Testing webkit on windows is somewhat difficult because windows safari is a piece of crap. I'd much rather test in this.
The problem is more the fact that implementations aren't standard, and of course that IE stagnated on adding and improving features.
Clever ideas will eventually be adopted by other browsers, and that's a good thing. Developers can code around those features that don't exist in all browsers, so that their pages degrade gracefully. That's all part of being a developer.
The problem is when doing something that is supported by different platforms results in different things, because that means that you have to code normal things differently.
Microsoft has to play in the real world and that means being able to run some shitty app that was written back in the 16 bit days that some company can't live without and won't pay to get rewritten. That means maintaining code that shouldn't exist anymore, allowing "features" that should really have been bugs to continue to operate, and generally maintaining an increasing level of code bloat with every release.
Linux, for the most part, doesn't have that problem because they don't have to play in the real world and so they get to say "screw you" and remove badly coded legacy crap and let anything that depends on it die.
Theoretically this works because all the software is supposed to be open source and people can just fix it(though of course a lot of companies can fix those 16 bit apps too because they own them), but mostly it works because people don't use Linux anywhere where that sort of thing matters.
Look at how much flack Microsoft took for the changes they made in vista and all the stuff that broke, and that doesn't even come close to clearing out all the crap they could have culled.
In the real world people won't change their OS if their app doesn't work/isn't supported on the new version. This applies to linux as well as to Windows, and every other OS that exists or has ever existed.
We still have some NT boxes where I work because some of the software used in that area won't run on anything newer, and so long as they can still find licenses and hardware it can run on they'll continue to do so because changing it would be too expensive(even if they had the source).
If Microsoft got to cull out all the terrible stuff they'd done the way that Linux does it'd run a lot faster and a lot cleaner, and a lot safer, but they can't, so their software is slow, bloated, and buggy.