Linked by John O'Sullivan on Tue 7th Oct 2003 18:42 UTC
Microsoft has a little liability problem called Windows. Many are no doubt aware of a would-be class-action lawsuit launched last week in California. The suit targets Microsoft over security problems. The plaintiff is a woman who had her identity stolen. Details are
here. (NYTimes, free registration required)
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Quote:
"M$ development will slow down, and that's a good thing. Since they have a monopoly, they get new version out too often for large enterprise to have enough time to handle, and thus, cost millions of money to upgrade every 2-3 years, witch is unacceptable. The rest of the industry will inovate without fear of being purchased of copied. So it's a good thing. "
You make a good point about Microsoft. However, the same argument applies to the rest of the industry. Concerns about liability will slow down all development, commercial, open source, or free.
To take a specific example: gcc 3.3.1 was released in August; gcc 3.2.3 was released in May and by now is closed. Guess which compiler I am using to compile my (Gentoo) system? Correct, 3.2.3. Why? Correct, because 3.3.1 produces bad code once in a too-frequent while. So if the gcc people worried about liability, they would be testing and retesting gcc 3.3.1, and would release it sometime next year.
BUT try making a 3.2.3 cross-compiler for an ATmega16 AVR (an embedded processor). At least for me, it didn't work, so I have to use the less-stable 3.3.1 as a cross-compiler. If there was no 3.3.1, I would be out of luck because 3.2.3 just doesn't have all the features I need.
My point is: today, developers sarcrifice stability for features, and it's often a good thing.
Quote:
"Small vendor almost allways produce more quality code and check more with their customers than M$ does." [...]
Maybe. But Microsoft can afford to prove (if it gets sued again in the future) that it made an honest effort to look for bugs by keeping an audit trail or doing regression analysis or whatever. It is harder for small companies to afford the expensive audits.
Quote:
'"If you don't pay $$$ for a degree, and don't pass an official exam, and don't work for a licensed corporation, you just might lose the right to release software to the public. "
What are you talking about? Open source has nothing to worry since people that use that kind of software do it by choice, not because they have to upgrade because they're not supported? I think it will even boost OSS as they already produce quality software over quantity. '
If (for example) California passes a regulation that (for example) state schools must use software produced by (for example) software engineers or corporations licensed in the State of California, most open-source projects would not be able to compete.