Microsoft targets Wine

Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2419

Microsoft targets Wine

No more updates for virtualized Windows..

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Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) validation initiative has set off a firestorm of protest throughout the open source community after programmers uncovered a special function in the software dedicated to detecting Wine, a compatibility layer for running Windows programs in non-Windows environments.

WGA authentication is set to become mandatory for all non-critical Windows updates starting in the second half of 2005. Customers must run a program that verifies their Windows license, or they will not have access to Windows Update or the Microsoft Download Center.

Full details at Betanews.com.

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It is just sad that MS is so scared of losing Market Share and Product Revenues, that they purposefully go and break an application that allows them to sell more copies of thier Office Application. It isn't enough that they sell an Office Suite, they want to force the End Users to purchase a MS OpSYS, to boot. I mean some shops are primarily Linux, or some form of *niX variant and maintain MS Office Suite only to be interoperable with businesses that run some form of MSO. I use Open Office myself, but there are so many variants of Windows Docs and other Office formats, that I have to use MSO also, in case I run into some weird formatting issues, that OpenOffice cannot work with properly.

Did you even read the article?

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Actually I read the Article a week ago. http://tinyurl.com/52p5u [SlashDot Link]

"Still, even if this is only an initial attempt, they appear to want to discriminate wine users, while this may be acceptable for operating system components/updates, this is probably a violation of anti-trust law for all other downloads. It's also the first time Microsoft acknowledges the existence of Wine.

Ivan Leo."

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Additionally...

I do not know you Brandon, but you might be old enough to remember the first iterations of this marketing tactic.

http://tinyurl.com/4bcw8 [eWeek.com]

"Yes, some of us from way back then are still around and writing about this business. And, we were also around when Microsoft finally paid Caldera a fistful of millions of dollars to settle the suit that developed from Microsoft's attempts to crush DR-DOS."

http://tinyurl.com/3mvsf [EarthState.org]

"Microsoft was writing Windows 3.1, an important upgrade to the hugely popular Windows 3.0. In September 1991, a plan was hatched to use this upgrade to kill DR DOS. In an email discovered by the Dept. of Justice, the head of Windows development and Microsoft VP David Cole wrote, "aaronr had some pretty wild ideas after three or so beers--earleh has some too." The plan was to plant code into Windows which would "put competitors on a treadmill" and cause the system to "surely crash at some point shortly later." In order words, Windows would intentionally bomb if it detected DR DOS."

Also Quoted from the Article

"What the guy is supposed to do is feel uncomfortable, and when he has bugs, suspect the problem is DR DOS and then go out to buy MS-DOS, or decide not to take the risk for the other machines he has to buy for in the office," wrote senior VP Brad Silverberg in a February 1992 email to David Cole. It worked. With the damage done and DR DOS destroyed, Microsoft disabled the killer code in the released version of Windows 3.1.

However, Microsoft didn't bury their tracks well enough. Software guru Andrew Schulman decided to investigate these mysterious bugs and released his findings in the September 1993 issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal. Based on the work of Geoff Chappell, he discovered the part of Windows that created these unusual error messages. It was encrypted by Microsoft engineers; encryption is a method used to hide information. Oddly, this was the only part of Windows that was encrypted. This code also contained numerous other unusual tricks to trip up any investigation of what it did.

So I say, it looks like business as usual, for Redmond.

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Island Dog

Join Date 06/2003

+1048

The Microsoft conspiracy theorists.

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Island Dog

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It's true.... however, it was pre-windows 95. any more recent examples?

Some of microsoft-hater has super-long memory.

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joeKnowledge

Join Date 03/2004

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http://tinyurl.com/4slmo [Business Week Online]

"The company's demeanor was no different inside the courtroom. Gosling, a Sun vice-president, faced off against Microsoft Associate General Counsel Thomas Burt, who doggedly attacked Gosling's 35-page direct testimony. The key issue -- and the subject of civil litigation between the companies -- is whether Microsoft could make changes to the Sun progamming language. Sun has designed Java so that it can be used to create programs that run on any system that runs a "Java virtual machine" -- software that allows programs written in Java to run on top of a computer operating system. But that works only if all versions of Java are the same."

And now for something completely Different... Let's not forget the Opera Browser incident.
http://tinyurl.com/6098 [Opera.com]

"Two weeks ago it was revealed that Microsoft's MSN portal targeted Opera users, by purposely providing them with a broken page. As a reply to MSN's treatment of its users, Opera Software today released a very special Bork edition of its Opera 7 for Windows browser. "

Or a little more perhaps?
http://tinyurl.com/4aldj [CnetNews.com]

Microsoft has said it has reopened the redesigned MSN site to rival browser makers, but as of Friday morning, the most recent browsers from Mozilla.org and Opera Software still could not access MSN. Netscape users also continued to report access problems."

I know this is a never ending debate. I realize not everyones' hands are clean in thier dealings with each other. MS does not play fair, and that is a fact. Let us not forget all of the Antitrust issues, so recently covered.

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Corky_O

Join Date 04/2004

It would be interesting, though improbable, to see what another company placed in the position Microsoft has been in would do.

Human nature is what it is, and idealism is wonderful - but not very useful in the competitive, even warlike environment of big business.

An interesting experiment.

Anybody think it will happen?

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Dude... didn't they prove that the Opera incident was a PR stunt by the company's founder?

I don't remember the exact numbers... but it went something like this:

-Opera 6.1 works fine with MSN.com
-Opera 6.2 changes something intentionally that breaks MSN.com
-Opera founder cries out that Microsoft/MSN is discriminating against his page.

Pretty shady if you ask me.

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I am a "newbie" as it is put, but I can read. It is simple too understand even to someone as green as I am. I believe what Frogboy stated was that is you are too use Microsoft Windows in a non-windows environment (which really is generous of them anyway)then you have to actually have paid for it too get access to the non-critical updates. You will still have access to the critical updates so that you can continue to use their product. If you want more software updates (most free) from them then you have to prove you paid for the darn thing in the first place. So what is the Hubbub Bub?

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MS already blocks pirate copies of Windows from updates, so this in itself is nothing new.

If MS wants to complicate the use of their products, let them. It will just give the Linux community more reason to develop better native Linux programs, and make Linux more attractive to the traditonal MS user. They're cutting their own throats with greed; not an unusual behavior at all for an overgrown,mindless corporation, is it?

Meanwhile, IBM and Novell have embraced Linux, and they each have more than a little influence in the PC world. Ultimately, MS will be forced to reduce software prices AND provide better products, or fade away and die. Gates knows it, Ballmer knows it, and the Linux supporters know it. It's possible right now to have a fully functional business running Linux, and applications that are all non-MS, and many businesses see the savings, and are beginning to switch.

The next five years or so should be interesting, in the OS arena.

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