Potential effects of Vista's DRM on the industry at large

[Valkaiser]

I just finished reading this.
Needless to say it left me in an intensely aggravated state. In my previous naivety I had thought that Vista's integrated DRM scheme would affect only those unfortunate enough to own it, this paper opened my eyes to some very scary implications about how my life might be affected by Vista's mere presence as a dominant operating system. I suggest that you read the above in it's entirety.
Let me know what you think.


I'm planning a fallout shelter to house myself and all of my "nonconformist" or "obsolete" computer paraphanelia...

[Etoh*the*Greato]

*hugs his mac*

[Valkaiser]

Your mac will not save you... Apple has already bought into similar (though possibly not as intense or far reaching) things.


If anyone needs me, I'll be outside, strapping automatic weapons to Tabitha.

[Warrior4Christ]

Yep, I've read that a while ago (except in HTML form, not text). As unlikely as it is, I hope Vista's DRM is very unpopular with customers, and hence would cause Vista sales to fail, which would cause them to rethink DRM for Vienna (ie. remove it). If they had put effort into WinFS and other such things rather than DRM, it would have been a good operating system.

[Zarn Ishtare]

Looks like we're going to have a consumer war...eesh. So, I see new operating systems from indy developers rising if this sort of thing ever happens, and people dumping IE for Opera or Firefox...I really think we need more of that, a strong independant operating system that isn't a pain to set up/download/buy.

[Warrior4Christ]

Looks like we're going to have a consumer war...eesh. So, I see new operating systems from indy developers rising if this sort of thing ever happens, and people dumping IE for Opera or Firefox...I really think we need more of that, a strong independant operating system that isn't a pain to set up/download/buy.

Enter ReactOS.

[Etoh*the*Greato]

The problem I see though is a large number of indy OSs coming on to the scene. Development for software becomes a pain then, as developers have to choose whichever of these ninety billion potentially different systems to program for. I see that being just as bad for the consumer as anything.

[Icarus]

That would be a problem, but the question is: how many OS's are there currently? Off hand, I can think of 7. I don't really see a developer writing code for a system that he can't name inside of minute.

That's what I like about free software. It's not about what they let you do, it's what you can and want to do. After reading that, there is no way I'm ever going to install Vista without significant reimbursement.

[Mithrandir]

I stoped counting at about 100...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_operating_systems

[Etoh*the*Greato]

Well yes, there are a ton of indy OS's at this point, but if they became the major way of doing things? That's the problem I'm seeing. Not the current insane amount of obscure Operating Systems.

[Kenshin17]

Ok on the issue of OSs. the consumer market has two dominant OSs, Windows and Unix/Unix Based. With the Unix side of things what one version can run most versions can run, same with Unix, the key (from what I have seen) is the kernel, which is not as widely varied as the GUIs.

Second I can tell you right now what Vista's DRM has done. I bought a Mac. Sure Apple has DRM but its with iTunes and not in the OS. And Mac OS X is Unix which has been around since the 60s 70s and can beat Windows on a bad day. And then their is the issue with Microsoft not having an original idea in its life. Every facet of office was derived from superior non-MS products. Vistas "New" features have been in OS X for years, and even still Windows is no where near Unix OSs when it comes to stability and performance.

Windows is popular because of brilliant marketing, and the fact that the majority of software is written for it, not because it is the best, It is faaaar from the best.

[Etoh*the*Greato]

I'm gonna sound like a complete nutter here and say that I actually have MS office on my mac... I tried both and I just liked office better. *shifty eyes*

[Etoh*the*Greato]

New News: Seems Apple was spying in on this thread. I found this today.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/02/apple-and-emi-ditching-drm-is-good-but-its-not-good-enough/
The DRM is history for OSX, but there may be other stuff.