Microsoft reward snags suspected Sasser author

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The truth is,,, can you handle it?

"bug-fix fund to reward the people inside or outside MS who discover and correct serious bugs / security issues?"


I always sigh when I hear comments like this. It shows just how little understanding of Windows and the multiple "masters" it must serve.

The first and worst of them of course is the legacy application monster. The client does not care if it takes another 5 million lines of code in Windows, he wants his 10 or 15 year old application to run just as it always has. They expect it, demand it, and won't settle for anything less. But of course they also want the latest and greatest application to run and run fast.

You can't forget legacy hardware either. Take a look through all the device drivers for hardware in WindowsXP and then consider that much of the supported hardware isn't made anymore and in some cases the OEM that made it doesn't exist anymore. Yes many of the old drivers were around, and it helps, but most if not all of them had to be re-written to work with the newer Windows API set.

While you are trying to maintain all of this, you must also move the OS technology ahead with the rest of the industry. In fact you want to stay ahead of the industry and your competition. After all, you must sell product to remain a viable business and no one wants 5 year old product/technology.

You make a false (and somewhat silly) assumption when you say MS can't find the bugs or the security issues. They are VERY aware of them and what is causing them but the fact is, in order to "fix" some of them it means breaking legacy support in both applications and hardware. I will let you in on a meeting I had with MS over a very specific "bug" in the 2003 Office applications.

Office apps allowed the user to "call" other applications or activeX controls. Say a video in PowerPoint. You could then send this presentation to someone for playback on their machine and when they viewed the presentation it worked pretty much the same as it did on the development machine. In Office 2003 that changed. The client will now get a warning that you are "calling" another application and it *could* be something harmful. It's very disrupting to the presentation to have this every time something external is called!

Microsoft knew it was a problem, they knew it was going to bother some people, they knew it would "break" existing presentations, and they knew they had no choice. After all, I could include *anything* on a CD and call it from within a presentation or a Word <ocument. Bottom line, the warning is staying.

The fact is it's a trade off and when you are building a product for everyone, every one must give to some degree. Features must give, security must give, legacy must give, future plans must give, pet peeves must give, in truth building an OS for everyone is all about compromise.

I have seen the methods MS uses to spot "bugs" and how they track and prioritize them. How they review the damage done to legacy support when they change something, the regression testing they go through, and the final approval/test process. Believe me, you have no idea what you are saying when you claim they can't find their own problems.

But, open source doesn't have these problems, right? Possibly, but then you must look at how few desktops Linux runs on or the limited number of desktop applications running on Linux. I won't argue the percentages with you, the fact is it doesn't come anywhere close to the hardware/software diversity Windows does. Heck, an ATI video card is about as common as sand on a beach but there are no good open source drivers for it. Well, there is, but like many things open source, it's barely "good enough". Now some would claim that is ATI's fault, but you know what, I don't care if I can't use my video card.

Nor does open source have anywhere near the legacy code load that Windows does. It's funny how people will recompile a UNIX app to run on Linux, but if MS told customers they had to recompile to run on a new version of Windows they would have a fit. Of course Windows allows many, many people with no IT department and a minimum understanding of their applications to gain productivity from them. They don't even want to know what recompile means.

Also consider that open source tends to "cherry pick" what it will and will not attempt. Take a very popular MS product, don't worry about legacy support, strip it down when it comes to features and functions, and then pronounce it "good enough" for most people. Yes there are some rare exceptions to this, but even then, they had the luxury of someone else doing it first and then building upon that knowledge.

Bottom line, the finding and fixing of "bugs" is not the problem. Deciding who has to "compromise" in order to fix it is. Unless they decide to only cater to 2 or 3 percent of the desktop users that is...

Posted by: No_Ax_to_Grind   Posted on: 05/08/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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