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  • From: Tanner Lovelace <lovelace AT wayfarer.org>
  • To: InterNetWorkers <internetworkers AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: MS claims punishing it would hurt security
  • Date: 23 Apr 2002 18:09:35 -0400


On Tue, 2002-04-23 at 14:14, Andrew Phillips wrote:
> >From what I understand what they're talking about is they feel they
> would be blamed if a they were required to sell Windows 95 and it had a
> security breach. They can't be expected to keep up on products from 7
> years about and there arguments make complete sense to me. Do you see
> the government doing this to Adobe or Macromedia? You might say "Well
> Apache supports over 9 versions of its software" but the big difference
> is Apache isn't trying to make money, Microsoft is.
>
> Supporting old Software is difficult, not only do you need developers
> but you need phone support, QA, managers, etc... There is no reason they
> should have to do this. Now if The States mean supporting Windows 2000,
> Windows ME, Windows XP all at the same time, they're doing that already.
> They just phase them out over time, and its not like its at the drop of
> the hat, you can find the information out on the website years in
> advance. If you don't like it, don't use the product.
>
>

Actually, it's not as difficult as you think. The main problem
with MS "updates" is that they don't just fix problems, they
invariably add new features. That's really what Microsoft wants
to avoid. By not being able to add new "features" with their
service packs, they can't subtly change things to be incompatible
with competitors.

Tanner
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