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Microsoft Patents the Crippling of Operating Systems
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue May 19, 2009 03:42 PM
from the can't-have-just-anybody-writing-software-no-sir dept.
from the can't-have-just-anybody-writing-software-no-sir dept.
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.
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Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, wait.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
I suppose they're doing us a service with this patent. Now no one else can deliberately cripple their operating system. I suppose their motive was for that Max-3-Apps thing in the starter versions of 7.
And didn't Vista have similar functionality?
I'm very surprised that this got through. I believe I'm staring at pieces of prior art in the form of a pair of Hypervisors which 'unlock' features after entering a key (stating that I purchased it). These happen to compete against Microsoft's Hyper-V...
I don't think that any real action will come of this particular patent. It smells to me like they're trying to justify some sort of innovation quota. I really can't see this being enforceable at all... But, I'm not the one arguing this in court either.
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Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
The date on the patent application is 2005. Vista was released November 8, 2006. [wikipedia.org]
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Re:Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
but vista had been under development for 8.
hehe, it's STILL under developed...
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Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.)
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Shareware? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
I believe I'm staring at pieces of prior art in the form of a pair of Hypervisors which 'unlock' features after entering a key (stating that I purchased it).
I think this dates back to Doom and Quake, personally, possibly earlier.
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Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this dates back to Doom and Quake, personally, possibly earlier.
Doom and Quake aren't operating systems. The patent is narrowly scoped to apply only to operating systems. Microsoft can't use the patent against anyone other than an operating system provider.
It has also been the case of mainframe computers to have their capabilities artificially restricted, but from my knowledge it was implemented in hardware, accessed by flipping a single DIP switch. The license agreement for the hardware bars the end user from manipulating this physical switch absent a license for the added functionality enabled by the switch. But that's not an operating system restriction either so also doesn't count as prior art.
You might be able to argue for the last official version of GS/OS for the Apple IIgs as being prior art in that it shipped with Ethernet-supporting code in the binaries but without enabling it for end users. Unless they tailored their definition of an operating system to exclude GS/OS or something else disqualifies it (such as never being officially enabled that code outside of internal development of the never-shipped Apple IIgs Ethernet card AFAIK).
IMO this is a business method patent that should not be patentable due to it being blatantly anti-competitive.
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Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
A shareware OS hmm... it has been a few years but what about TSX32. http://www.sandh.com/os.htm ? It was distributed in the shareware channels back in the early nineties. It was crippled until you purchased a license if I recall correctly. I believe that would make it prior art.
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Re:Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
They just gave it a name: "Method and technique for getting user to pay money to continue accessing their data".
If you received a phone call using this technique, the FBI would call it a ransom demand...
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Re:Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Phone calls can be traced. When I encrypt other peoples data, I prefer to be compensated with eGold.
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Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
I suppose they're doing us a service with this patent. Now no one else can deliberately cripple their operating system.
Why bother? Any artificial crippling will be removed by those meddling pirates anyway, from any OS. Remember the WGA check in XP? I've never seen it.
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Re:Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
Now no one else can deliberately cripple their operating system. I suppose their motive was for that Max-3-Apps thing in the starter versions of 7.
As others are no doubt pointing out, anyone who wants to challenge this in court can find lots of prior art. In the case of the limit to the number of running apps, this is quite similar to the gimmick that was in Sys/V unix two decades ago, which limited the number of simultaneous logins to 2 unless you paid them extra to change the byte that held the limit.
Back around 1990 or so, I had a bit of fun with them. Due to problems diagnosing remote login problems, I wrote a login-like program which basically had the same functionality, but it had extensive builtin logging, so you could find out why a login was failing. The program worked as a drop-in replacement for the standard login program, but it missed one feature: It didn't honor the 2-user login limit. When users "complained" (heh!) about this, I pointed out (publicly in several forums) that I'd omitted it because I didn't know where the login limit was stored. I said that if the AT&T folks would tell me where it was hidden, I could add support for the login limit.
For some reason, we never heard from them, and I was never able to add that feature. They probably figured out that I'd add it as an explicit command-line option, making it trivial for users to disable it if they liked. Also, they probably figured out that, since my program was open-source, anyone would be able to read my code to find out where the login limit was kept, and write their own little program to overwrite that byte.
In any case, I worked on a number of projects where this stupid limit was one of the listed reasons for not using Sys/V as our platform. We generally thought that delivering a system so crippled and demanding money to fix it was simply tacky, and not something that we wanted to do to our customers. Sometimes I wonder what happened to Sys/V; I haven't seen it in years, and I don't recall reading of it being retired. Of course, it lives on as POSIX, more or less, but the implementations don't use any AT&T (or SCO?) code, so we don't see such limit in the unix part of the industry any more.
(Or do we? Are some vendors still doing such tacky things to their customers? Other than Microsoft, of course.)
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Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
How can they patent this? Microsoft has all sorts of prior art.
Forget Microsoft. Enterprise (software and hardware) vendors have been doing this for decades.
Heck, anyone who has even a passing familiarity with "enterprise" infrastructure like SANs will be familiar with paying tens of thousands for a piece of paper with a license key printed on it to, say, unlock the other 32 ports on their Fibre Switch.
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Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Huh? (Score:4, Informative)
Are those recent prices? And, is any of this gear actually "enterprise" level quality, or just expensive crap you can get for cheaper down at the best buy? Either way, that is some fucked up shit.
As far as I'm concerned, its all a big scam. The only thing I can really compare apples to apples is the hard drives. The hard drives that they put in those FND SANs cost something like $1500 for a 500GB SATA (these prices were from like 1-2 years ago). They say that the drives are certified, but as far as I'm concerned, if they don't last for 20+ years and go 10 times faster (which they don't) then they are not worth that price. Unfortunately, I guess if you want to get support and the whole 9 yards on support, you have to go through them. You can't just buy your own hard drives from DEX or something. So yeah, its a big scam. When we spent the million on a 40TB SAN (included large switches too, etc.) I sat down and calculated how much it would cost to buy some 15 bay chasis with fiber channel cards and fill those up like DAEs. For 1 million, we could have had a 1PB SAN. Or we could have had 40TB for like $40,000.
I know that, at least with NetApp, they flash the drives with their own, proprietary firmware. That's what you're paying for. I'm not sure if the firmware actually makes them more reliable or allows tighter integration with their controllers or something. The cynical side of me wouldn't be surprised if it is only to keep cheaper drives from working with their controllers and actually does nothing for performance or reliability.
The saddest thing about NetApp is, they have a great product! However, the pain of being sold on their product based on what we were demoed it can do only to discover after it was installed that EVERY SINGLE IMPORTANT FEATURE required a frickin' fortune to separately enable makes me unable to recommend them to anyone else. We actually rolled out two OpenFiler boxes right next to it that have performed admirably and can do almost everything the NetApp does for about 5% the price. Basically, the only stuff we run off the NetApp are the "politically sensitive" systems. If the NetApp bites it we can raise our hands, point and say "Hey, it was on the expensive 'enterprise' system..." Otherwise, we've seen just as mush reliability out of the open source OpenFiler systems.
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Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can tell you a bigger scam: medical devices. I had a buddy in college that supported MRI and other imaging hardware and he said (this was like 2 years ago) that an 80Gb IDE drive would cost upwards of $3000-$5000 depending on the vendor and they would void your warranty if you dared to use a WD IDE(which according to him it was just a standard WD retail drive) you picked up at BB.
So basically one of the reasons you are getting jacked when you end up in the hospitals is the medical equipment corps have the hospitals by the short hairs and they of course have to pass on the costs to you. This crazy BS ought to be illegal.
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Re:Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
This isn't limited to software either. Here's one I'm just familiar with:
the YJ Jeep (years 88-96) came with the option of a 19 gallon gas tank. Standard was ~12 gallons. They found it was cheaper to make one gas tank and the standard one had a tube attached to it that would make the pump think it was full at 12 gallons. You can get around this by "topping off" for several minutes while you pump another 7 gallons into a full tank, or you can disassemble the inlet and remove the tube, (about 2" round 8" long) from just under the inlet area. By not taking the upgrade you are actually getting more parts.
PS. if you own one of these jeeps and want to do it google for it you should be able to find a nice pictorial howto
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Re:Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Hampsters and wire brushes don't count.
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Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
Hello Verizon? Can you hear me now?
Verizon (and others) have been crippling features in phone OS's and charging to turn them back on for years.
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/02/1755207 [slashdot.org]
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Re:Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
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Why not patenting bugs? (Score:4, Funny)
Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a win-win for Microsoft and the feds. And that's all that anyone who will prosecute them cares about.
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Apples and apples (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Apples and apples (Score:5, Insightful)
Ransomware. Crippleware [wikipedia.org]. Shareware. Nagware. Beerware... it's all been done [google.com] before. The only difference is that this is an "operating system" not an "application."
Apparently, that's enough of a distinction for the USPTO to award a patent.
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Is it just me... (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Logical dilemma (Score:5, Insightful)
> '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.
Re:Logical dilemma (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Only if you assume the end-user requirements remain static.
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This might be new in the desktop OS market... (Score:5, Informative)
... but it definitely isn't in other areas.
A number of NAS and SAN vendors ship products with features disabled on the OS until you pay a 'licensing fee' to unlock the features. NetApp, Isilon, and EMC/Clariion are just some I can think off the top of my head that do this.
Technically, it isn't quite the same as say, unlocking Windows 7 Ultimate from the Home version, but it's fairly common practice in the enterprise world.
Linux Lawsuits - NOT! (Score:5, Insightful)
prior art? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd think there would be plenty of prior art, especially in the more general "software" category.
Shareware for one.
There was also a "windows 3.x" shell clone back in the day that was also distributed as shareware and I think that limited some functionality.
Crap...can't remember the name of it...Geo something (sadly...I've been feeling nostalgic and been reading up on old game consoles so the only terms that comes to mind...is neo geo...d'oh)
What about the Amiga system....the OS was on a chip...and you had to pay to get it or you just had a "limited" (VERY) functioning computer...(more like a big paperweight).
I'm sure there have been some other lesser known operating systems in the crevices of history that had this "limited functionality" (shareware) mentality.
Product activation (Score:3, Insightful)
They've patented product activation. You don't get the full app till you pay up, or find a crack.
Seriously, is this really any different than the countless other schemes for product activation that have been tried and found lacking over the years?
Hah! Too funny. (Score:5, Funny)
An additional problem with open architecture systems, Microsoft explains, is that 'virtually anyone can write an application that can be executed on the system.'
Well sure, let's fix that then. I have an experiment I'd like to try if this is the case.
Let's order up some Windows 7 and not pay. MS will remove my ability to install new programs on it, right?
Ta da! I'm now immune to viruses and worms. And all it took was not paying MS. So glad that one is finally solved completely. No new software can ever be run on my machine. I'm safe now.
Thanks guys.
Prior Art (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Paging DEC... (Score:5, Interesting)
DEC Unix (aka DEC OSF/1 AXP, Compaq/HP Tru64 Unix) has done this since day one (and IIRC VMS did it before that). You have to enter License PAKs to get all kinds of functionality, including multi-user logins, development tools, cluster support, and AdvFS filesystem utilities.
MS Crippled OS Patent (Score:4, Funny)
Don't they mean trademark? ;)
Yes, please! (Score:4, Insightful)
"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"
Yes please!
Okay, look, I'm not really interested in encouraging people to use MS Windows. But in those situations where I am forced to support it, having the ability to enable additional features on an as-needed basis would be vastly superior to having to license and install a whole different "edition" of the whole freakin' OS to get the same feature set. (You bought a new touchscreen monitor and you want to add tablet support to XP? Great, that'll be forty bucks, ten minutes, and we're all done. As opposed to now, when it officially requires an OS reinstall.)
Plus, having the ability to monetize services individually will - Lord forgive me for seeing a bright side here - will encourage Microsoft to ship with a minimal default install, which one would hope would lead to improved overall security.*
The patent is pretty laughable, though. It strikes me as a tad obvious.
[*: Yeah, okay, maybe that's a bit of a stretch. But hey, it could happen!]
Of all the firms that might try to patent this... (Score:5, Insightful)
... Microsoft is certainly the one that deserves it. They've been practicing at it longer than anybody else, starting with Windows XP nine years ago. This is one patent, sadly, that Microsoft actually earned.
Invalidated by definition (Score:5, Funny)
OH NOES! (Score:4, Insightful)
> An additional problem with open architecture systems, Microsoft explains, is that 'virtually anyone can write an application that can be executed on the system.'
Of my dear Lord! You wouldn't want someone not working for a duly licensed corporate entity to be able to write for your corporate approved operating system.
First Joe Sixpack will write something for his own computer and then the terrists.
That statement is un-farking-believable.
"Problems" with open systems? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, according to Microsoft, problems with open architecture systems is that:
(1) The people who license (whether by purchase or otherwise) those systems can use them fully, and
(2) People can easily develop application software for them.
Why would anyone want to buy (or, for that matter, develop software for) an operating system from anyone who considers those things problems?
What is this, ambiguous headline week? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that:
Microsoft Patents [the act of] (Crippling Operating Systems)
or
(Microsoft Patents) [are] Crippling Operating Systems
Pfft... (Score:5, Insightful)
That is a nothing patent. Here is something that would be scary:
A method and apparatus to prevent the installation of an unauthorized operating system over an authorized installation of an existing operating system.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's called "feature protection" (Score:5, Informative)
There may be prior art for this in the mainframe or embedded-systems world.
The term of art is "feature protection". It's as old as mainframes.
(I believe it was a Univac where the difference between two models was a jumper that adjusted the clock rate. The info got out to the customers and one salesman was really embarrassed when he brought a prospective customer to an existing installation for a demo. The customer asked if he wanted to see it running as this model or that, pulling open a door and reaching for the jumper...)
One mainframe company I worked for put out a machine with multiple CPUs in it. The extras served as switch-in spares or for field upgrades if the customer paid to enable 'em.
It isn't just a "cheat" to get more money from the customers. On some devices (like printers) running at a higher speed increases the wear and the resulting maintenance requirements. Similarly, in the CPU case, running more CPUs increases the heating and shortens the life, while having less spares shortens the time until / increases the probability that you actually have to pull something out and replace it.
Making a single model and selling it as multiple levels using feature protection may be a lot less expensive (especially on high-dollar, low-volume products) than engineering multiple models. This benefit can be split between the manufacturer and the customers. It also makes upgrades a lot cheaper and less disruptive for both the customer and the company.
In software licensing it's been around since license manager software and dongles: Pay for more seats or more functions, they get turned on.
What's so special about doing it for OSes?
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