Should Microsoft Be Required To Extend Support For Windows XP? 650
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."
Where do you draw the line? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Where do you draw the line? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually Google already gave the Wave to the Apache foundation, so I guess they're set from that point of view.
That aside, I don't think a company should be forced to provide any level of support for a ten-year-old product. They could even be up-front about ("this product will not be supported for longer than five years") and people still wouldn't care. Well, until the day came.
Re:Where do you draw the line? (Score:5, Insightful)
With software, and by extension the hardware it requires, the lifespan is incredibly short compared with almost every other product out there. I'd like to see more companies release the software, code, etc. to the public domain as a formal way of walking away from it, but leaving customers with something more than "gee, must suck to be you" for support.
Borland released old versions of tools like Turbo C when it was no longer relevant commercially. Even though I paid for those tools when they were commercially relevant, I always liked the spirit of giving away old software. There's no cost to releasing it to the public domain. There are plenty of third world countries learning on and using technology that we throw away. There's a benefit to those people having software and learning technology but there's absolutely no money in it.
There are fringe cases where ongoing support is needed for really old systems. For example, I've been in machine shops with computers that drive CNC machines that run on 386's under DOS. As long as the machines keep working, it's a valuable part of running their business. Today it's nearly impossible to find replacement parts, but smarter shop owners bought extra pieces when they were disappearing from the market long ago. If something breaks, these people are willing to pay a premium to people who can help them. They know it's not a great situation, but it's much better than spending hundreds of thousands to replace everything that depends on old systems.
Proprietary interfaces, boards and drivers that integrate machinery with computers are the legacy components that makes it hard to replace these old systems. If they used an RS232 interface for low bandwidth data and Ethernet for higher bandwidth, it wouldn't be hard to reverse engineer what's going on and write software that runs on modern systems that could serve as a replacement. But a proprietary interface that requires an ISA slot and custom cables means there is no way to modernize that doesn't require new custom hardware.
The space shuttle is another good example of what happens when something is decades into its service life, but has components that were never expected to live that long. NASA can't just load everything on an iPad and hope each crew member bringing their own is enough fault tolerance and stands up to the extreme environment of space.
XP isn't all that old, as evidenced by the number of users who don't want to get off of it. It makes sense that Microsoft wants to get rid of it - there's no price for a support contract that would make it mutually beneficial to keep tech support trained on it and developers dedicated to working on it. But at the same time, Microsoft is not the kind of company that is likely to release it to the public domain either. The last thing they would want is an open source community picking it up, keeping it current with security patches and making it work on new hardware. That's the antithesis of the forced upgrade model.
Re:Where do you draw the line? (Score:5, Informative)
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My cars are 16 and 18 years old with about 200K miles each, and are still worth fixing.
One of them, a 1998 VW Beetle TDI, has exactly the same safety rating as one built as recently as 2011 (because it's the same unibody!), gets better fuel economy than a 2014 [fueleconomy.gov], and pollutes less (except for particulates) because the older engine technology can use 100% biodiesel while the new one can't.
The other one is a 1996 4-cylinder Ford Ranger that gets better (or at least equal) fuel economy to any new (or newish) tru [fueleconomy.gov]
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Of course, legally they are not required to support those things now, but I would favor a law change that would require it.
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Rosetta was licensed from Transitive, which was eventually bought by IBM. Apple didn't own it, so they couldn't open-source it.
I'm willing to bet that Classic drew on an ancient codebase with bits of licensed code mixed in. Getting it in a state where it could be open-sourced was probably more trouble than it was worth.
Re:Where do you draw the line? (Score:4, Interesting)
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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?
The paper (if you read it) claims that the requirement should be enforced based on the Microsoft having monopolistic power in the marketplace. Apple doesn't wield monopolistic power in the marketplace for desktop operating systems.
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The problem is a bit more complex than that. Microsoft has not really been all that informative about their end-of-life policy for their operations systems, and it is certainly nowhere to be found in the EULA or the contracts they happily signed for $$$ with the companies, that are now in a pickle because of it.
Further, Microsoft can support Windows XP, they just want more $$$ to do it (so, if they can do it for one company, and the goods they're selling are infinite, why can't they for all the rest?). If t
Re:Where do you draw the line? (Score:4, Informative)
However with your definition of $100 USD, cost to upgrade OS from XP to Windows 7, as being "an arm and a leg" not to sure about the rest you wrote.
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More barriers to entry? I guess it'll be good for the lawyers.
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I don't think so. Full disclosure should limit liability and increase our satisfaction with our merchandise. Happy people have no need for lawyers.
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it's a pretty easy barrier if enforced on _everyone_.
you see, a supplier wanting to hide something based on "trade secret" or whatever(often used to hide just blatant copying anyways) ? well fuck then they don't sell on one of the biggest markets.
if eu and usa did it at the same time then manufacturers would have no option really - and their suppliers would need to either comply or get out of the business, making the barrier for 3rd parties to start making competing products smaller - not bigger.
Complete access and indefinite support for free?! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Honestly if there were barriers to creating a semi-monopolistic software monoculture, I don't think that would necessarily be a bad thing.
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. A better comparison would be Ubuntu LTS which includes firefox and whose support is measured in years not months. However Canonical having only a fraction of a percent of the market
Re:Complete access and indefinite support for free (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
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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. A better comparison would be Ubuntu LTS which includes firefox and whose support is measured in years not months. However Canonical having only a fraction of a percent of the marketshare that Windows XP does, is not making a business model in supporting releases for over 14 years.
As a direct comparison, Windows XP is OVER TWELVE YEARS OLD now and has not one, not even two, but three major versions newer available to the public. In Ubuntu terms, Windows XP is the equivalent of Ubuntu 06.04 LTS (12.04 being the current LTS as 14.04 has yet to be released) and should be treated accordingly.
Doesn't have to be free (Score:5, Interesting)
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)
Re:Doesn't have to be free (Score:5, Informative)
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.
You CLEARLY do not understand how time consuming and costly it is for a company to provide even basic patches for a piece of software. On SMALL SCALE application my company has deployed it is costly to have even one developer have to do this repeatedly (I know because for one of our system I am this guy...). Having repeated interuptions for support calls, entire sets of days that have to be blocked off to patch some bullshit, and a sales department breathing down my neck because the longer this goes on the worse it looks on the company. All the while the 3 other projects I was working on (as the damn lead at that) are getting behind and it is my ass to catch them up.
It IS an enourmous financial burden, especially when they have to invest in researching the security vulnerabilities because if one is discovered and exploited before they patch it hits them in the court of public opinion (and their sales directly). Upgrading is expensive, yes everyone knows this, but guess what, this happens with every other consumer product on the market today. It is unreasonable for people to expect software companies to do it indefinitely FOR FREE. Even if they could do it with a paid service, they do still have the right to refuse service. Normally I am all for the consumer over the business (because most businesses are cut-throat douches), but what people expect with Windows XP is just insane and they don't apply basic sense to their arguments.
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You CLEARLY do not understand how time consuming and costly it is for a company to provide even basic patches for a piece of software.
Really? I'm an accountant and an engineer. I've done a fair bit of programming professionally and I'm pretty sure I've got a better handle on the actual costs involved than most of the people reading this.
. Having repeated interuptions for support calls, entire sets of days that have to be blocked off to patch some bullshit, and a sales department breathing down my neck because the longer this goes on the worse it looks on the company.
None of which is relevant here. Microsoft does not provide support calls unless you are a REALLY big customer and they would be paying for the priviledge. They have people whose entire job is to "patch some bullshit". There is no sales department breathing down anyone's neck regarding XP. The only th
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Your position is really out there, you know that?
Cars cost more because they are naturally scarce. Every one you make takes time and effort and resources.
Once software is made, it is trivial to make enough for everyone. Every person who could be advantaged by it but isn't is another example of waste and inefficiency.
If you can sit in a room, look at your creation, destroy its capacity to enrich the human experience just out of a spiteful desire to render it scarce when it doesn't have to be, and not be wr
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> IMO the "right" thing to do is either release the source or provide full API and file format specs.
Microsoft has a very poor history of providing API's. Examine the history of the "OOXML" API, which was broken from its publication and has never been actually followed by Microsoft Office products. Or look into the Samba and EU lawsuits against Microsoft, mentioned at http://www.linuxinsider.com/st... [linuxinsider.com]. The original specifications that Microsoft provided were _horrible_, and quite useless. And they're sti
Re:Complete access and indefinite support for free (Score:4, Insightful)
to support they could simply release their internal documentation, source code, diagrams etc. to the public
That isn't a simple matter at all if you're still developing new versions of your product based on the same materials. You are proposing that a business whose primary asset is its collective knowledge should be required to give away the most important knowledge it has accumulated, at great cost, up to a certain point, just to absolve it of a hypothetical liability that it was never realistic to assign to that business in the first place.
That would be a fair compromise considering that IT is one of the very few industries that get away with delivering faulty, unstable and insecure products as the accepted norm. If houses or clothes or refrigerators were produced like software...
...then a lot of houses would need expensive repairs after a few years to fix damage caused by subsidence, pests, unanticipated weather conditions, or the neighbours causing damage while doing work on their own property, while cheap clothes would be some of the most frequently returned items in stores because they fall apart after they've hardly been worn due to economising on manufacturing techniques and materials?
People talk a lot about how software is unreliable and breaks all the time, but the reality is that most consumer software is remarkably resilient given the many and varied jobs it needs to do and the cost of making it. I'm writing this on a Windows 7 PC that I've had for several years. I can count on my fingers the total number of times Windows has fallen over, and as far as I know all of them were actually caused by either a hardware failure or a dodgy update to some additional system software like a device driver or security tool, not by Windows itself. Sure, some software isn't up to scratch and the people who make it deserve to be criticised, but I don't think it's fair to claim that software in general is some sort of unusable, bug-ridden mess.
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Mod parent -1, megacorp shill. Disclosure of the manufacturing process is the opposite of a barrier to entry!
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That may be a good idea for things like medical or aviation related devices where people can die if they fail. There are regulations in these fields for exactly this reason, and that's why it's such an expensive and long, drawn out process to bring new products to markets in highly regulated industries like these.
However, putting that burden on every industry would just move all technology jobs to countries without such regulations. Then what would you do to stop people from buying crappy, poorly supporte
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No its not, manufacturer is responsible for product safety but that doesn't mean anything must be disclosed.
No, but they should be. Cars have ridiculous safety standards, with engineers poking their noses into everything and it hasn't prevented cars from being a success.
I don't know of a car flaw that can tank an economy, cause a nuclear disaster or cause oil to spill out into the sea. But a software flaw can do all these things.
The risk to society is too high for things to continue in this way, and there are many other qualified people who would love to shoulder the responsibility if greed pushes MS or any oth
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Oh c'mon, you know how it would work in this time and age. If some blunder in MS software caused a nuclear meltdown, MS would be declared too big to fail and you can shove your damage claims where the sun doesn't shine.
Re:Where do you draw the line? (Score:5, Informative)
Oh c'mon, you know how it would work in this time and age. If some blunder in MS software caused a nuclear meltdown, MS would be declared too big to fail and you can shove your damage claims where the sun doesn't shine.
If you use MS software (or anyone else's software) in a situation where it could cause a nuclear meltdown, you are using it against Microsoft's explicit terms and conditions, so they wouldn't be at fault at all.
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I don't know of a car flaw that can tank an economy, cause a nuclear disaster or cause oil to spill out into the sea. But a software flaw can do all these things.
If your company is in a mission critical business, running unsupported software like this, then someone's head should roll. It's not the products fault, and it's not like there aren't other options. If you want a product to supply the things you're requiring, you shouldn't expect to get it out of a tiny box at Best Buy.
Re:Where do you draw the line? (Score:5, Funny)
The disasters caused by Y2K were so quickly forgotten...
Re:Where do you draw the line? (Score:4, Interesting)
No, but if there was a market for T1 spare parts, someone would come and open a business that deals with just that. That is the whole point of the whole thread!
Who decides when the "end of life" of a product is reached? Its maker, or its user? Who decides when an item has outlived its usefulness, its maker or its user? Who the fuck is MS to tell me what I think is still usable and what is not?
The point here is that if XP was a car, you could rest assured that even if MS decided to discontinue offering spare parts, the market of people who still want to use it is SO big that businesses would be popping up left and right pumping out spare parts for it.
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This is what "patents" were originally intended for. To allow public disclosure of the new manufacturing process without losing the competitive advantage.
Nah just have copyright last for 14 years (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
Re:Nah just have copyright last for 14 years (Score:5, Insightful)
Shorter copyright would actually not hinder but force innovation to happen. Right now, you can invent something and if it turns out to be "gold", you can milk it forever. No need whatsoever to ever invent anything again.
That's supposed to spur innovation? Could someone show me how?
Re:Nah just have copyright last for 14 years (Score:4, Interesting)
Right now, you can invent something and if it turns out to be "gold", you can milk it forever. ...That's supposed to spur innovation? Could someone show me how?
I agree with you, and its not. Copyright extension was a blatant cash grab engineered by a corrupt legislature to rob the public through the Mickey Mouse Act [wikipedia.org] .
I suppose we should be thankful there is a limit of any kind. Actual quote :-
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Shorter copyright would actually not hinder but force innovation to happen. Right now, you can invent something and if it turns out to be "gold", you can milk it forever. No need whatsoever to ever invent anything again.
That's supposed to spur innovation? Could someone show me how?
Imagine living in a world where half the population is illiterate and the majority are required to work labor from dawn till dusk, where free time is scarce and every single moment spent pursuing "flights of fancy" instead of pursuing "real work" has a significant cost to the individuals involved.
Copyright was created for such an environment. Did quite well by us in moving beyond that way of living. Now that a high school student has access to publishing tools that will reach a global audience, it's just
Re:Nah just have copyright last for 14 years (Score:4, Informative)
"The Joint Stock Companies Act 1844 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that expanded access to the incorporation of joint-stock companies.
Before the Act, incorporation was possible only by royal charter or private bill and was limited owing to Parliament's jealous protection of the privileges and advantages thereby granted."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J... [wikipedia.org]
Prior to this Act, companies were governed by the Bubble Act of 1720. They had a charter given to them by the nation. They earned profits, ridiculous profits, but they were a governmental entity responsible for enriching the nation at the expense of other nations, in the same way that a non-profit earns profits but reinvests them in the pursuit of the company charter rather than paying out to shareholders. This was the time of Mercantilism, not Capitalism.
In the USA, forming each individual corporation required a separate act of legislation until New Jersey adopted an "enabling" corporate law, with the goal of attracting more business to the state in 1896. Citizens governed corporations by detailing operating conditions not just in charters but also in state constitutions and state laws. Incorporated businesses were prohibited from taking any action that legislators did not specifically allow. States also limited corporate charters to a set number of years. And, if you broke the rules, you didn't get a fine, the company had its charter revoked.
In 1819 the U.S. Supreme Court tried to strip states of this power by overruling a lower court’s decision that allowed New Hampshire to revoke a charter granted to Dartmouth College by King George III. This was done on the basis that the charter was a contract between the King and the College, and that it violated the Constitution to pass laws to invalidate a contract. The US was no longer a part of the Commonwealth at this time, but that was deemed non-relevant to the contract.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D... [wikipedia.org]
That decision was the beginning of the modern corporation. This was when they moved beyond the control of democratic processes, were relieved of any duty to serve humanity and became all about contracts and shareholders and their duty became empowering the shareholders above all other concerns.
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The copyright running out on XP wouldn't solve the problem of a lack of support.
It also brings into question, which version of XP? Is XP SP2 a "new work" and thus an extension of copyright? Or is SP1 out of copyright but SP2 is not?
What a horrible situation, you could legally make copies of the original release of XP, but not install any service packs or updates.
Yea, THAT would be good for the Internet. :)
no. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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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.
Hard for me to believe there's any vital trade secret info in Windows
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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.
A potentially more interesting example is replacement auto parts, which automobile manufacturers are required by law to stock for 10 years after the last date of manufacture so that owners of the vehicles can repair them or have them repaired by a third party. Since the last ship date for Windows XP was the last contractual date that Microsoft allowed vendors to bundle it with new computers, that would give them about an 8 year support requirement for "replacement parts". Note that the automobile example
Re:no. (Score:5, Insightful)
An interesting angle though, MS is in the process of officially declaring that they have no further commercial interest in XP whatsoever. They won't sell you a license even if you beg them. It's a little hard to call it 'valuable intellectual property' with a strait face when they refuse to derive any value from it.
Not really sure how much to make of that, just throwing it out there.
Re:no. (Score:4, Insightful)
So here is your big wake-up call. If you don't do something about the future guess what is gonna happen?
The big wake up call is that anybody not willing to continue to provide full support to a 13 year old OS version should be avoided? Got it. Now checking current official Apple support for Mac OS 9.2..., and commercial Linux distro support, bug and security fixes for their 2.4.0 kernel based releases.
Depends (Score:5, Interesting)
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I like this concept.
However, it would probably drive the companies bankrupt.
(Imagine supporting win 3.1, win 98, win me, win nt, win vista, win xp, win 7, and win 8 all at the same time because they share copyrighted code.
Re:Depends (Score:4, Insightful)
I like this concept.
However, it would probably drive the companies bankrupt.
(Imagine supporting win 3.1, win 98, win me, win nt, win vista, win xp, win 7, and win 8 all at the same time because they share copyrighted code.
Well, they could sign away the copyright and release the source code for any software they no longer want to support.
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Let them be let off the requirement to support (excepting for other contractual arrangements) when they relinquish copyright.
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Confusion over mixed copyright ownership.
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Well, then don't release a "new" system every other year. There is no reason we all couldn't still be on Windows 3.11.7000, except MS renamed it and sold it again and again and again.
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Great, that way they would still have to support XP for all those that didn't want to upgrade and we didn't have that argument now in the first place.
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However, it would probably drive the companies bankrupt.
It should suffice to retain copyright but make publicly available: complete machine-readable compilable corresponding source code, with a grant of permission for any third party to publish patches, compile binaries, and redistribute them after taking reasonable steps to ensure they distribute them only to lawful possessors of a copy of the original software.
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All they have to do is formally release the source into the public domain. That would end their obligation.
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Because no new exploits that require immediate patches, with no central authority to distribute said patches, would be found in that released source code...
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For corporations, copyright lasts 110 years.
That strikes me as unreasonable.
Yes, both the length of the copyright and requiring someone to provide support for that long.
Re:Depends (Score:4, Insightful)
Relinquish copyright on the product and the problem is solved. Release the source and there is no problem.
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Re:Depends (Score:4, Insightful)
Copyright was never meant to be used as a means to make a product or service unavailable. Quite the opposite. If a company decides to sabotage their own product by either refusing to sell it, making it prohibitively expensive or denying support and forbidding others from providing this support it should lose this right.
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Gladly. Know a company that would gimme support for XP? Preferably not MS, they're kind expensive, or so I heard from the UK.
An Alternative Law (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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.
Of course, it would also put a lot of web designers out of a job if they no longer need to spend hours working around quirks in older browsers, so be careful what you ask for.
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We still have to work around issues in newer browsers, and not just IE either :(
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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.
I might agree, if the versions of IE eligible for that treatment also included greater than or equal to 10...
No. (Score:2)
It would be nice if they moved it to public domain and released source. However, I think limiting copyright would be good enough. Then they'd have to offer something better than free xp if they want more money. This upgrade treadmill the software industry has everyone on motivates them to do exactly nothing beneficial to the users giving them money.
Re:No. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is, exactly, that it's getting harder and harder to justify upgrading your OS. It worked up to XP, but from there on ... but let's take a look down the MS OS timeline.
3.11 -> 95. A no brainer. 95 was leaps and bounds ahead of 3.11, which was at best a GUI to DOS. ... hey look, is that George Clooney?
95 -> 98. Finally networking that really works and doesn't need you to resort so some kind of third party tool to actually USE your network.
98 -> 98SE. Stability increase, far, far better support for various bits of hardware.
98SE -> ME. Erh... Well, let's be honest here, there were some
98SE -> 2k. The compatibility of the 9x line combined with the stability and the security from the NT line.
2k -> XP. Where 2k was "a business system that got some touch from a private user system", XP was where the private user became home again. 2k was a bit sterile, XP now offered everything they needed. Much better USB support, WLan out of the box, a much smoother user experience altogether and near perfect stability (outside of driver woes).
And that's where the "must have OSs" end, pretty much, from Joe Randomuser's point of view. He needed 95 for "true" 32bit stuff. He needed 98(SE) for easily working networking. He needed 2k for complete USB support. He needed XP for WLan support. But what would he need Vista/7/8 for? Nothing he could possibly want to plug into his computer has a problem with XP. Nothing he could want to run has an intrinsic problem with XP (yes, some newer games want a DX version that MS deliberately did not make available for XP).
What will in the near future possibly convince people to move away from XP and towards 7 or 8 (or, probably, by the time it really matters, 9) is 64bit support, something that didn't really work out well for XP, and about the only thing where I can say with a straight face that 7 trumps XP in every way, from OS itself to drivers. But to most "normal" users, a limit of 3.something GB isn't that big a deal, considering that most of the software they'd want to run is suffering from exactly the same problem, since it's 32bit soft.
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7 is a nice upgrade over XP, if you don't see or understand that, I'm not sure what I can say, 5 years on, that will help you understand.
Besides proper 64 bit support, the seamless way it installs and updates drivers and software for almost anything you plug into it is vastly improved over XP.
XP still wants a floppy disk for drivers needed during install, it was developed in another time, the world has moved on.
I have played with 8, it doesn't do enough over 7 to make the upgrade worthwhile for me, but I su
"Nice upgade"? For who? (Score:3, Informative)
7 is a nice upgrade over XP, if you don't see or understand that, I'm not sure what I can say, 5 years on, that will help you understand.
If you say so. I'm typing this on a Windows 7 machine and running my older XP machine in a virtual machine. Frankly Windows 7 does not have a single feature I need that I did not have with XP. NOT ONE. I know I am not alone either. I'm sure it's better here and there under the hood but frankly not in any way that was causing me problems. Plus it requires a much faster machine to accomplish the same tasks I already could do.
Besides proper 64 bit support, the seamless way it installs and updates drivers and software for almost anything you plug into it is vastly improved over XP.
64 bit doesn't provide me any noticeable benefit as an end user that I can disc
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I'd be surprised if much has changed beyond the shell
There must be a reason why so much XP based software apparently does not work on Win 7/8?
Wake up and succeed (Score:2, Insightful)
It's a damn business opportunity for anyone with business sense.
No (Score:5, Insightful)
That's like arguing that Nokia should still be providing support and software upgrades for the 6100.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... [wikipedia.org]
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You can actually still get parts for old Nokia phones. Not from Nokia, of course...
Car analogy (Score:2)
I'm trying to come up a car analogy for this. Is it like typical manufacturers defects, where it can be fixed under warranty for a limited number of years, or is it like a safety recall, where there is no expiration?
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It's where some third party company pumps out spare parts and addons long after the original maker of the car stopped supplying anything. It's not so uncommon actually, considering there are quite a few car enthusiasts that enjoy modifying and remodeling their cars. There's a whole industry that does nothing but that, actually.
Microsoft has gone above and beyond... (Score:2)
No other publicly available product has ever had such a long support duration as Windows XP has had.
Microsoft should be under no further obligation to its customers with respect to Windows XP.
However, if individual customers are willing to _pay_ a subscription for further support from Microsoft, they should be allowed to do so.
Microsoft still provide support for Windows XP (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft still provide support for Windows XP to those who are willig to pay for it: http://arstechnica.com/informa... [arstechnica.com]
Case closed.
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But why wouldn't Microsoft release security updates for XP if they're going to developing them anyway? Hell, I know some people who'd probably be willing to pay $100 a year (privately) to not have to go through the motions of upgrading to Win7.
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And no, I simply do not believe that people would pay $100 per year for patches to XP. They may say that, but when the bill comes, they will not.
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The case would be closed if someone could open up a competing business. Else we're talking a monopoly situation where the monopolist can (and obviously does) charge through the nose.
Extortion is what comes to my mind looking at that business model, not support.
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Re:Microsoft still provide support for Windows XP (Score:4, Insightful)
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Please link me to the page where I can sign my mom up for this extended support for XP. I'm sure she'd be willing to pay a nominal fee.
Her Microsoft Security Essentials is now trying to spook her into upgrading too, by becoming a System Tray-based reminder that XP support is about to end.
I'm waiting for her to crack so I can move her over to Linux Mint/Cinnamon.
Your mom likely has no excuse not to upgrade. What essential software is she running that only runs on XP? The only legit reason to not upgrade is if an organization is running old crappy software that only runs on XP and would be too expensive to replace, which unfortunately is pretty damn common, especially software written for large organizations (like medical institutions) whose development was focused on checking off requirements rather than quality. I blame those software vendors, but there's not a
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Sadly, I have a high dpi document scanner for which driver support ended with XP.
My TV tuner cards also only worked up through XP, but they have no analog signals to receive now anyway; except I'd like to use them to digitize old VHS tapes.
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4,294,967K should be enough for anybody.
Aftermarket patches already exist (Score:2)
The pdf seems to completely ignore that in the past, security researchers have written patches for Microsoft operating systems as a stopgap until MS could get its shit together and issue their own security updates.
I also take issue with the comparison to cars.
If you want to drive a car on the road, it requires a safety inspection, no matter how old it is.
WinXP, even patched, is the equivalent of driving around a rust bucket with bad wiring and bald tires.
It's an accident waiting to happen.
About the only thi
Linux needs to step up (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Infrastructure (Score:2)
One can argue that an OS is infrastructure, and not a product. Like water pipes and electrical wires, other services depend on them. Thus, an OS is not comparable to radios or clothes.
One is not expected to dig up their house and start over if a company decides nobody is allowed to support the existing wires or pipes bought from them.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Define Support (Score:4, Insightful)
No Linux distro provides decades of support either, you're just upgraded to the latest packages and that might as easily break things in the same way xp to win7 might.
As much as I hate M$.... (Score:2)
MS has offered upgrades at a reduced cost, it has supported it for about a decade, if people hold onto it, they do so at their own peril. Who holds onto a photocopier for ten years and expects spare parts? Yes I own an old laser printer and sadly, if it breaks I don't expect to have spare parts available. The devil inside me says that people are also holding on to XP because many machines could be activated with the same code, or even without a code in the case of many laptops supplied with a restore CD.
WGA? (Score:3)
i remember when XP was released and WGA ( or it's predecessor ) was new and people were worried that MS would shutdown their servers and make it impossible to reinstall in some cases.
MS promised that they would release a key or some sort of patch that would allow you to install without the server.
Where is it?
why mess with a good thing? (Score:3)
Microsoft is shooting itself in the foot by discontinuing XP because so many devices rely on it. And the market is reacting with a move to Linux. Companies who bet too heavily on Microsoft and Windows XP, i.e., companies run by stupid people, are losing big time. That's the way markets are supposed to work.
If the government intervenes, it will do three things: it will perpetuate a lousy operating system, it would prop up Microsoft's desktop OS position a little longer, and it would prevent companies that made stupid beds on Microsoft's proprietary software from suffering the consequences of their poor choices. I don't see any compelling public interest in any of that.
Enough excuses already (Score:3)
If people put as much effort into getting off of XP as they spend fighting the inevitable, they would not be facing these challenges right now. Microsoft has made it quite clear that they are going to sunset the product. There have been newer, better operating systems released that provide an easy upgrade path. Unless someone is running a single core processor, Windows 7 is faster and more stable than XP.
And if the newer Microsoft OSes are sooooo terrible, "There is always Linux." (Or OSX)
These "Save XP" articles are tired and played out. Move on guys. When I read these articles, all I hear is, "Whaaaaaaa. I have procrastinated for the last five years and now I'm fucked. Save me from my own ineptitude!!!"
For a community focused on OSS and Linux. For a community that has consumed Lord only knows how many terabytes of storage bashing XP and touting the glories of ANYTHING ELSE. For a community like that, one would think that XP going EOL would be celebrated with much merriment and significant rejoicing. Oddly enough, it seems that one would be wrong.
No. (Score:3)
We all had ample time to get the fuck off of XP by now. All the crying and whinging is stupid. Update your damn OS already. It's not Uncle Microsoft's fault you didn't get your ass in gear and set up an upgrade path sooner.
Of course no (Score:3)
That OS is 13-14 years old...
It won't stop working (well maybe the activation thingy), you just won't get any kind of security updates, and in some time, it will be unsupported by security software (kinda like 98)
I still have a 98SE machine running (for old games that don't work on modern windows versions), but with some caveats
1- It's not hooked up to the network, and will never be
2- Older hardware will not have driver updates
3- Transferring files is done via DVD-R or CD-R (because no, it won't be hooked up, and no, I don't want to install USB mass storage drivers on it)
The same can be done with XP (activating it might be fun without an internet connection, but I'm pretty sure MS could release a little program that activates XP (but probably won't))
I'm glad not to be working for an ISP, it's gonna be a nightmare for both customers and CSRs when the machines get infected
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Fine by me, too. Then fork over Windows for free.
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Why only force one of them?
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They included Windows XP mode in Windows 7. Windows 7 upgrades are still for sale. Windows 8 includes a Hypervisor which will run licensed XP just fine.
They have good strategic reasons to move their conservative customer base to Windows 8. I wish if anything they were more aggressive.