Black Magic Code

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Why I program linux in the evening...

Maybe it is time for an update of the blog.

Being a developer you can almost guess what platform I develop for on my day job. You don't need superior mind reading skills to know that it is windows. Because the majority of the computers out there are running Windows. So it is natural that some program for that platform.

But looking at the development on the Windows world for developers I've recently becoming more and more worried on what direction it is taking. It is not something highly technical as the newfangled WinFX API that is the new "managed" interface to work with windows. The scariest part of the new direction is the Microsoft commitment of having the biggest media delivery platform. It means that they pay more attention to please the big media companies than the actual needs of their customers. You know the people that are actually buying the Microsoft products.

I know it is a conspiracy theory, but look at the circumstantial evidence: Microsoft patched the "vulnerability" that allowed removal of DRM in Windows Media faster than the VML exploit in the worlds most widely used browser. And of course there is the difference in the media capabilities of the different windows editions, there is more possibilities with patchguard than without. I'm going to hold my view what I think of patchguard for myself. But I'll tell you this much, I think it doesn't help to keep the questionable software out of your computer, even if it is marketed as such. The Sony rootkit fiasco should have taught us that, what happens if Sony f***s up again?

With Linux I don't have to worry of the direction of the company that delivers your favorite Linux distribution, because you can always change distribution.