Proprietary Piracy

I just read the Ars Technica article about Windows Genuine Advantage (misnomer), and an interesting thought passed through my mind: what happens if Microsoft goes away?

Well, none of the computers running XP or Vista would be able to install, and whenever a Vista system attempts to download an update that requires it, loses all of the fancy visual effects and eventually goes into "Reduced (read No) Functionality Mode", without any way to get out of this bottomless and dark pit.

I see the lock-in to Microsoft as being like the lock-in to proprietary formats; if the primary vendor goes away and the software gets deprecated there is no way to access all of your data. However, for an Operating System it's much worse. Users won't be able to access ANY of their data. A small percentage of the users that jump ship and move to Linux or another OS that emerges might be savvy enough to mount the NTFS share and salvage all of the data that they can, but it will be very hard on anyone that does not know how to work a command prompt.

I call this the software dark ages, because computer society as a whole is descending back into command prompts and mount points. Sure, attempts are being made to make Linux more user friendly, but it's hard, because it is hard to both hide all of the technical information and provide a user friendly way to access it.

The only ones spared from the dark ages will be the Mac users. They will carry on with their OS X and Core Animation goodness. Some of the people that jumped the Windows zeppelin will move to the Mac, but those users that want to purchase a $350 PC will have a harder time, especially without those Windows subsidies.

I would predict that the dark age would last about two years, enough time for some small computer startup to either build on top of some variety of UNIX or make Linux user friendly enough for normal users. Once that is done, distribution will still be more spread out, possibly ready for another company with Microsoft tactics to re-take the computer market.

And the cycle begins again, this time with more powerful processors and a more complex OS, making the dark age last longer this time.

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