Tom wrote:

Roy Silvernail wrote:

...

Concur. MICROS~1 is moving steadily toward a secured platform that gives them full control of what will and won't run. Were it up to them, there would be no third-party development. Ironic, considering third-party development has played such a large part in their rise to ubiquity.

I doubt they want to get rid of 3rd parties. but I bet that someone had a wet dream about "run-license-fees" in addition to money for development kits and MCSE batches. so, the future for M$ may be even MORE 3rd party developers - but unless they ship, say, $1 to M$ per copy sold, their software simply won't run. oops.

Good point. Do you think there is a critical mass point where developers would "just say no", though? Certainly this would tend to push out smaller independents and could do major damage to freeware. I'd be much less inclined to write for an OS where I had to pay for the privelege of running, even though I wanted to give my software away. I hadn't planned any Whistler/XP apps anyway, and this just reinforces my decision.

in short: if the software doesn't trust you anymore, you have ample reason to distrust the software in return.

I couldn't agree more! -- Roy M. Silvernail Proprietor, scytale.com roy@scytale.com