Re: Cryptogram Comment

From: Daniel James (wastebasket_at_nospam.aaisp.org)
Date: 06/18/04 

Date: Fri, 18 Jun 2004 13:36:33 +0100

In article
news:<yejAc.6850$MD7.5404@news04.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com>, Tom St
Denis wrote:
> MFC, # and .net are just gimmics to scam people into thinking
> Windows is "growing".

No that's not it. I agree that MS have an agenda of their own behind
the development of these technologies, but they're not just a scam.

MFC was originally an abtraction tool so that people could write one
application and compile it for both 16-bit and 32-bit Windows. It's
also a fairly functional C++ wrapper around the Windows API that does
make coding quite a lot easier than in the bare Win32 API. (It's a
piss-poor example of object oriented design, though, largely because it
had to be supportable on MS's old 16-bit compiler for pre-standard
C++.)

C# and .NET are MS's response to Sun preventing them from using Java.
They're actually also (rare) examples of MS not acting badly, as
they've been made ECMA standards, and overall control is now out of
MS's hands and in the hands of the ECMA. MS can't change these
technologies without going through the normal ECMA standard review and
update procedures. Being ECMA standards also means that there is the
possibility that they will be submitted for ISO standardization by the
fast-track mechanism.

Java, on the other hand, remains proprietary to Sun; who have (twice, I
think) started the process of submitting it for public standardization
and then withdrawn it for no adequately-explained reason.

> ... that aside, none of this makes MSFT responsible for the actions
> of people who steal their [crappy] software.

That's a tough one ... I can see both sides of the argument. MS made
the crappy software, and they have a (moral, if not legal) duty to fix
it and to provide the fix FOC for paid-up customers. I think we can
agree on that much.

If the effect of the crappiness was only to the detriment of the users
of the software themselves - and not to innocent and univolved third
parties - I'd certainly agree that MS had no responsibility to provide
the fix to those who've just ripped the software off; but as the nature
of the crappiness is that it also affects third parties I'd say MS had
a (moral if not legal) duty *to those third parties* to offer the fix
to all users, including pirates.

Cheers,
 Daniel.