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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 15 2012 @ 11:23 AM EST |
The question I am more interested in is the opposite:
What software which is available today will Microsoft
prevent you from running on Windows in five years?
The relative openness and neutrality of the
bare-bones Windows platform has spawned a thriving
ecosystem of software that uses Windows as its OS
platform, but has no ties to MS and uses none of
Microsoft's tools for programming, distribution or
end-user authentication. Games make up one big
and important category of such software, but it
is by far not the only kind of relatively
untethered and reasonably open Windows software.
Firefox, LibreOffice, Blender, Gimp, Inkscape, Octave,
even Emacs, are all highly useful free software products
that exist and prosper even on the non-free Windows
platform.
Apple seems to take strides towards making their
MacOS X as closed as iOS, and now Microsoft repeats
that pattern with their plans for Windows 8.
We are going from "secure boot" to a full lock-down
with a toll to enter the walled garden, and an even
bigger toll to get out once you are in.
That "secure boot" is a boot made of cement, and it
is secure only in the sense that you can't get out
of it. I prefer not to step into it.
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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