Microsoft Licensing Fee Intended To Reduce Hobbyists 355
BokLM writes "Microsoft's Amir Majidimehr, Corporate VP of the Windows Digital Media Division, explained at a DRM conference in London why they require a license fee from device makers." From the article: "According to Amir, the fee is not intended to recoup the expenses Microsoft incurred in developing their DRM, or to turn a profit. The intention is to reduce the number of licensees to a manageable level, to lock out 'hobbyists' and other entities that Microsoft doesn't want to have to trouble itself with."
Do as we say, not as we do... (Score:4, Interesting)
Ballmer: Developers! Developers! Developers!
Yeah, uh huh... right... sounds more like THIS discussion...
Dr. Walter Gibbs: User requests are what computers are for!
Ed Dillinger: DOING OUR BUSINESS is what computers are for.
Driving the wedge deeper (Score:5, Interesting)
I do have to wonder how much of this is to show a strong front to the increasingly powerful media companies and their mostly oppresive DRM schemes.
Jerry
http://www.networkstrike.com/ [networkstrike.com]
Standard Business Practice (Score:3, Interesting)
When pricing a product, you typically want to set a minimum price specifically for the purpose of eliminating the deadbeat/hobbyist factor. Yes, you'll lose a couple of potential sales because the price presents a barrier to entry, but if you did the math properly, that minor loss is substantially easier to swallow than the loss from a huge non-revenue-generating support obligation. If the majority of your customers are businesses, they won't blink at a couple-hundred bucks for a product.
Re:Things haven't changed since 1976... (Score:2, Interesting)
All your idiotic paraphrasing did was make you sound like an advocate for software theft. If you don't like someone's software, you should go write your own, you shouldn't steal it. If you don't like how much Photoshop costs, you shouldn't steal it, you should use the GIMP. You make it sound like stealing a commercial software package and then using it to write open software is just fine.
You just come accross as another Gates-hater that hates big, bad Microsoft because it's cool to do.
Read his entire letter... (Score:3, Interesting)
He says hobbyists cannot write good software:
He says he's the best at doing it:
He says that if you sell software written by yourself, you're just distributing bugs. So that implies that only software written by his company should be distributed because only he has the resources to make it immaculate.
Free software is bad because he can't make money: That "deluge" would almost certainly cause him some financial gain from people who otherwise would have worked on projects to distribute as a hobbyist.
Amazing Hypocracy (Score:5, Interesting)
Gates: "No, the best way to prepare is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating system." -- From: 'Programmers at work', Microsoft Press, Redmond, WA [c1986]:
In 1975 Bill Gates and Paul Allen, who were students at Harvard University at the time, adapted BASIC to run on the popular Altair 8800 computer and sold it to the Altair's manufacturer, MITS. The Altair BASIC interpreter was the first computer language program to run on the type of computer that would later become known as the home computer or personal computer. Even though the BASIC programming language was already in the public domain by then, the interpreter that could run it on home computers wasn't. Thus Gates and Allen had created an original product; a true innovation. It would be one of their last.
Gates and Allen had initially met at Lakeside School (an exclusive private school for rich boys) where Gates became an adept at BASIC on a General Electric Mark II. Shortly thereafter they got access to a PDP-10 run by a private company in Seattle. The company offered free time to the Lakeside school kids to see if they could crash the system. Gates proved to be particularly adept at doing so. When the free time ran out Gates and Allen figured out how to get free time on the PDP-10 by logging on as the system operator. About a year later the private company running the PDP-10 went bankrupt.
This left Gates and Allen without a source of free computing power. Therefore Allen went over to the University of Washington and began using a Xerox computer by pretending to be a graduate student. Gates soon followed, and this went on until they were caught and removed from the campus. They continued to break into university and privately owned computer systems until about 1975. By that time Gates was a student at Harvard University. The BASIC he sold to MITS had been developed and tested on a Harvard PDP-10 using an 8080-emulation program that Allen had adapted from earlier code. In fact, by the time Gates contacted MITS to announce their product, it had never ran on an actual 8080 CPU. The demonstration Gates and Allen put up for MITS in New Mexico was the first time the product actually ran on the system it was intended for. Gates sold it by announcing a product that didn't exist, developing it on the model of the best version available elsewhere, not testing it very seriously, demonstrating an edition that didn't fully work, and finally releasing the product in rather buggy form after a lengthy delay. From then on this modus operandi became Microsoft's trademark.
After Gates sold the new BASIC interpreter to MITS he left Harvard University, and went into business for himself with Allen as a partner. Allen was also an MITS employee at the time, which made his position rather interesting. Gates' departure from Harvard is shrouded in controversy: some say he dropped out, others say he was expelled for stealing computer time. Whatever the case may be, the fact is that Gates did most of the work on his BASIC version in a Harvard computer lab without having been authorized to use the (expensive) computer time needed for the project. Perhaps he did not really steal unauthorized computer capacity (which was a valuable commodity in those days) to develop his first commercially successful product. Yet he has never offered another explanation. He did however send his now-infamous "Open Letter To Hobbyists" to every major computer publication in February 1976, in which he decried the copying of Microsoft software by home computer hobbyists as simple theft. -- excerpt borrowed from Why I hate Microsoft [freedomware.us]
Depends on how do you define "hobbyist". (Score:2, Interesting)
A lot of DVDs made in Finland get region code 0. I can understand that (some noble but ultimately futile dreams on Finnish cinema getting big on foreign market, I guess =). But most of the DVDs don't seem to have CSS either, which kind of puzzles me.
I'm not familiar with how CSS licensing works for content authors, but maybe, maybe some Finnish producers said "hey, let's copy protect these things" and another producer said "well, that's not going to happen, have you seen what prices they're asking for that?" (that's just for the sake of argument, I guess in real life, it's more likely the other guy is saying "but that doesn't work anyway - why bother..." =)
The point is, if you're using DRM licensing fees to fend out "hobbyists", you're also likely fending out smaller players. In an analogy that hopefully makes it all clear (even when I think DRM in general is such a failure that it practically fails in this goal, too): what use, really, is a protection that is just intended to keep rich people richer and poor people poor?
Hobbyists, Or ...? (Score:3, Interesting)
I find it way too easy to replace "hobbyists" with "independent music producers" in that quote. And lock them out to benefit who? Organized Music? Almost certainly. MS wants to play nice with Big Music, get their content, and make a few more tens of billions in the process. Get government to close the so called "Analog Hole". Lock struggling producers out of a standard for DRM. Nothing here to hurt the big players at all. All this is just another reason why MS must die.
(As a company, you idiot lawyers.)
Re:Sweet Zombie Jesus (Score:1, Interesting)
(and btw it adds a bad conotation, it's software made during free time, not real work...we're lucky the PR dept didn't opt for "communist hippies" to talk about gnu...)
remember "active directory" "wins" "sql server" etc...every word ms employees use has to be different from the generic term, i'm even sure they don't "google" but instead "msn" stuff, and never begin a sentence with "i was grepping through files..."
(as a side note, the first time i was confronted to that i didn't understand the compulsory "corporate spirit" at ms and though the guy i had in front of me was either kidding or stupid===we were talking about mp3 while drinking a coffee, the ms guy that was with us kept talking about wma, it was impossible to make him say "mp3": it was directly translated to "wma" even if it made no sense in the sentence)
Re:Things haven't changed since 1976... (Score:3, Interesting)
Change of headline (Score:2, Interesting)
Balancing openness with business reality (Score:4, Interesting)
If Microsoft is hoping to get real devices out there that include their DRM component, then what they're doing is putting up a barrier to entry to ensure that only those who are truly committed to building a mass-market product get the attention of internal staff so that MS can make money indirectly through devices that use and license the DRM component.
Whether or not that's a sound business practice is their decision to make. But it's not a unique model. If you want to release a game on PlayStation, Gamecube or XBox, you license the development kits from Sony, Nintendo or XBox. They do this because they're in a mass market and need to ensure that the companies they work with and who use their name are equipped for what happens when something succeeds massively or has major problems. Microsoft's approach for their DRM is no different--the only difference is that a VP went out and actually set realistic expectations for what it takes to be a developer for those platforms in a forum that pissed boingBoing off--enough of a commitment and a financial stake in the game to make sure that something useful comes out of all the work people put into it.
It's true that hobbyists are often the source of completely original, unexpected innovations, and any company that is serious about innovation encourages that. Developer programs that embrace this open themselves up to very new ideas. But let's make a clear distinction between encouraging hobbyists and the business drive behind encouraging real applications, services or devices that make money for a developer and the company that makes money from the platform.
Please don't get me wrong: I stay at my job managing a developer program because I love answering developer questions. I love helping someone out and seeing them succeed, particularly if they have a great idea and the nads to see it through. I also believe that developers should have as many tools freely available as they can have. Where I work, I always try to argue for making information, APIs and toolkits open and accessible to every developer. I often get into some very heated discussions with people who argue that we should only make this API or that piece of documentation available to existing partners because they don't want to deal with hobbyists--in fact, I'm actively lobbying for something like that as I type. I tell internal resistors that by staying closed off they're never going to hear of the new stuff, they'll only hear from the same people over and over again and they'll still have to deal with hobbyists. I also help hobbyists and independent developers figure out ways of selling their product without having to build a business relationship with MegaCorp and dealing with what can be a bureaucratic process.
Being on the support side of things, I also contend with the reality of this internal advocacy--I often have to guide hobbyists and amateurs who are dabbling and who can consume hours of my day while clearly showing me that they're very unlikely to actually come up with something that could be a marketable product even if they go it alone.
Hobbyists-cum-entrepreneurs often have very unrealistic expectations regarding what they need to do to succeed. Some hobbyists tend to consume an inordinate amount of time from a company's developer relations and business development staff and don't turn out something that can actually become a product--and honestly, my business is to get developers from idea to market. These things include adequate support staff, sales teams, marketing funds, technical acumen and enough wherewithal to deal with contract n
Don't take their position as just a nuisance ... (Score:2, Interesting)
It is still so, because, unfortunately, various Windows are still most ubiquituous, despite recent explosive proliferation of free OS's. I am certain they are cospiring to, using DRM as an excuse, lock free competition out, by bullying hardware vendors into ever tighter subjugation to themselves. In the end (and I suppose that is where MS is trying to get us), it may become illegal (under DMCA) to run non-MS OSes on latest, greatest and cheapest PC hardware. With IBM bailing out of PC hardware business, I don't see anyone with large back to cover for us.
Then, we'll have to make our own "free (as in free speech) hardware" (Wheee!!!) and it will get expensive, or have inferior performance. It depends of how deep are they going to dig to uproot us. What are we going to do if something at very basic level, i.e. memory chips or modules, get access control (lock) that will be illegal to circumvent? There are limits to practical avoidance. RMS was right in his insight that free OS is prerequisite for free software, but he had overseen that OS is not a basic layer of computing. Then again, at the time, hardware was far less "alive" and blackboxed then today and no one could predict that someday hardware could turn against its owner and side with some remote corporate bigbrother.
They are beyond selling to us what we can't do ourselves. Now it is preventing us from doing ourselves what they can sell to us. I feel like if the sky was closing each day a little bit more. And it is all caused by IP monopolies and creeping consent that someone has right to my money so if they don't take it from me, it's like I robbed them. Are we going to lay down and just die?
Re:Things haven't changed since 1976... (Score:3, Interesting)
Violating a shrink-wrap EULA is just as egregious as violating the GPL. If we wish to be strict about the one, we have to be strict about the other. I think with the increasing "DRM" and activiation models that the shrink-wrap software world is finally going to drive people to F/OSS. Why? Because they are starting to hassle and annoy their customers. Every time I am forced to use "that side" of the software world (when I get a
While I'm personally "dogmatic" about Free Software, I am not professionally. While the Free aspect may be the most important issue to me, it most often is not to a business. But I do evangelize. Where the Free option is as good or better, or even nearly as good, I try to make the case for it because of the "hidden" benefits of no BSA audit, keys, activation hassles.
There's some stuff for team development on the new Visual Studio that, in a sense, is little more than a neat bundling of the kinds of collaboration tools we've had in F/OSS for some time. But they've put in stuff for project management that I haven't seen in the Free world because we don't worry so much about resources and deadlines. (BTW, if people here know of such tools, I'd love to hear about them). This is an area where I think MS has jumped ahead in appealig to business. But I would expect to see similar features in platforms like Eclipse before much time goes by.
I'm not sure that that last isn't off-topic, but I offer it as an example of why a business might make the "wrong" choice for the right reasons...
Re:Linux didn't really advance computing ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Linux didn't really advance computing ... (Score:5, Interesting)
I dare to disagree (Score:3, Interesting)
Everyone is to busy hanging out at the mall, or spending their pocket money for ringtones and other junk. A "buy this!" generation is growing up, unable to do the most basic tasks by themselves.
In the 80s, people dumped video games for home computers. The slogan was "Why buy your kid a game when you can buy him something that gets him to college?"
That trend has already changed.
Today the slogan is more akin to "Why bother with operating systems and incompatible hardware when you can just slip in a DVD and play?"
We "old" people might even be able to do things ourselves. Our next generation won't be able to do anything by themselves unless it's part of their job. We already need repairmen for things our parents would've done themselves. Our kids will need assistance when it comes to upgrading their operating system...
Not because they're dumber. It's simply lazyness. We don't want to learn more than we have to to get by.
Re:Biting the hand that feeds it? (Score:1, Interesting)
Students, hobbyists and people in small businesses choose software that is of high quality, easy to use, and cheaply configurable. People in large enterprises choose software to avoid getting fired if anything goes wrong, to avoid having a different opinion from the boss or to get a nice freebie from the sales team. It's a hell of a lot easier to sell software of the quality and utility that Microsoft produces to the latter group.
Re:Things haven't changed since 1976... (Score:3, Interesting)
If it wasn't for people like the HOBBYISTS who were hand wire-wrapping intel 8008's into S100 boards and their own TV Dazzler cards from articles in hobbyist magazines; IBM never would have made the PC which is now killing their profitable mainframe business and Billy Gates never would have had a platform to launch either DOS/Basic or Windows on. My first computer used an RCA 1802 CPU, was programmered by hand toggleing the machine code in byte by byte, and had a whopping 255 bytes of static ram memory; it taught me that a computer was something that a mere mortal could use. The concept that a computer could be used by normal people was pretty revolutionary.
Another reason - DVD John (Score:3, Interesting)
From what I remember, DVD CSS was cracked because one company used a weak key. That key was SO bad it was fairly easy to brute-force, and then there were more fundamental weaknesses that allowed them to extract the other keys, given the first one.
Had there never been a weak key, perhaps DVD John never would have gotten his 15 minutes of fame.
So perhaps this DRM developer restriction is to make sure that nobody makes a weak key, that they do a better job of educating this smaller set of developers.
It was not. (Score:3, Interesting)
My first 'OS' was GEOS (unless you count Commodore64 basic as an OS)
After that it was PC Dos (not MS Dos although I switched to that later)
THEN Windows OS/2, THEN Windows 95.
MS grew on the backs of hobbyists and enthusiasts (Score:3, Interesting)
Sorry, this is WRONG. By and large we use computers DESPITE using Microsoft Windows, not BECAUSE of it. Microsoft has always been a low-innovation company; it takes old ideas and finds new opportunities for them. Microsoft's very first product, BASIC for the MITS Altair, was an old idea brought into a new market space. Bill and Paul didn't invent BASIC, and didn't invent the OS. By the mid 70's writing a BASIC interpreter was a pretty garden-variety activity for enthusiastic hobbyists fortunate enough to have access to minicomputers. BillG is not a vrey good innovator, but he is a visionary of sorts and can spot unexploited opportunities.
Other innovatinos borrowed by Microsoft:
* Modern microcomputer architecture of BIOS and OS borrowed from Digital Research (BDOS and CP/M)
* Colour graphics (Cromemco(?) Dazzler card, Apple II, Atari 800 all before 1980)
* Mouse (Douglas Engelbart, 1964)
* Graphical User Interface (Xerox Alto in 1973, Apple Lisa in 1983)
* Web Browser (CERN WorldWideWeb, 1990 and NCSA Mosaic, 1993 - MSIE started off as a a re-branded/derivative version of this browser licensed from Spyglass Software--a firm trying to commercialise the academic project)
Microsoft was simply savvy enough to know how to bring these technologies to the masses and establish a dominant, standard platform. Standardisation--THAT is why we all use computers as much as we do today, NOT because MS makes such good software. I think that if we were all lucky enough to have companies that had both Microsoft's "vision" (business savvy, really) and Xerox/Digital Research/Apple/Atari/Commodore's talent for innovation that computing would be far more advanced and ubiquitous than it is today, because computers would actually "work".
It was likely your first operating system.
On this forum, likely NOT. My first exposure to computers was on a freinds TRS-80 CoCo (The original, silver, memory-challenged model 1), and on my school's Apple II (no plus, e, c or gs). The first OS I seriously used was CP/M 2.2. I remember when the lab for Jr/Sr high was upgraded from Commodore PETs to 8088 machines, with the brand-new MSDOS 2.11. Slashdotters are enthusiasts and generally got into computers as early as possible in their lives. If Windows was your first OS then (with a few exceptions) you are probably quite a young
MSFT lost to InterTrust in court HELLO!!!! (Score:1, Interesting)
Of course not. Micro$oft had to pay nearly half a billion dollars to InterTrust for violating their DRM patents! HELLO! Micro$oft is probably still having to pay licensing fees to them also.
Today InterTrust is owned by Sony and Phillips (at least last time I checked) so we know who is really in the driver's seat.
You're worried about the wrong company (Score:3, Interesting)
Smug Smug Smug! (Score:1, Interesting)
I Reasearched two XP based PVR systems, Two Linux Systems and one OSX System. Smug Smug Smug!
I have legal versions of all three OS's just hanging around. Smug Smug Smug!
I decided to go for a MythTV setup mainly because of the M$ DRM Hell! Smug Smug Smug!
I strted purchsing the missing pieces of hardware I needed to complete the system, making sure that each part is Linux compatible. Smug Smug Smug!
Within a week M$ starts screwing all the M$ kiddies. Dumb Dumb Dumb!
MythTV has a very bright future it would seem. Smug Smug Smug!
Re:Trusted Network Connect (Score:2, Interesting)
As a matter of fact, I have run free software on a video game console without making any modifications to that console, other than installing the hard drive, and network adapter.
And by the time you bought the PS2 and the Linux kit (which was discontinued before the price of the PS2 was cut to $150), how much did you pay in all compared to the price of an entry-level PC?
Re:Trusted Network Connect (Score:2, Interesting)
Memory Card: $29 (sometime in 2001 early 2002)
Linux Kit: $200 (pre ordered in 2002 received in May of that year)
Responding to a Slashdot post with the kit....
Priceless
I consider the money well spent, considering how much use I got out of the PS2, even pre kit, and how much use after.
in 2001/2002 an entry level PC cost at least as much as my total, if not a few hundred more. And such an entry level PC would not have been as good a game machine as the PS2 is/was.