
Microsoft threatens its MVP dev - this is what happens when you base your business on proprietary platform - nickb
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/05/microsoft_mvp_threats/
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snorkel
My favorite analogy of being a Microsoft developer comes from this article:

<http://www.stepwise.com/Articles/Editorial/wjs_Windows.html>

"Lots of small programmers have a vision that working with Microsoft is like
being one of those little toothbrush birds for crocodiles - sure, the
crocodile is the one eating the zebras and gazelles, but there's plenty of
crumbs left in the cracks between his teeth. The crocodiles don't hurt the
birds, as they appreciate clean teeth, and the tiny birds can live very well
off the morsels that the 20-foot crocodile deems not worth bothering with, so
everybody wins.

The problem with this analogy is toothbrush birds never grow up to be
crocodiles - they spend their whole lives just living off the gunk in
crocodile's teeth."

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mxh
... and this level of abuse is earned just by using a standalone tool in
officially un-approved-of ways. It seems that using a fully-locked-down
platform (e.g. F8, eventually Silverlight/PopFly or Flex) is an invitation to
even greater headaches.

I understand the enthusiasm for these things - they promise to make
development easier. But given that cell carriers take advantage of their devs,
and that game console manufacturers take advantage of their devs, I wonder why
more people aren't more worried about 'platform' taxes appearing in the
future.

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ced
That's a MS screw-up, not an argument against using proprietary platforms. God
knows how many web site owners Google could sue if it applied its Adsense TOS
to the letter, but they know better than doing that.

~~~
corentin
There are other known examples of proprietary platform problems (e.g. the
Linux/BitKeeper debacle; abandoned products by Borland, Microsoft and others
leaving developers alone in the middle of the desert)

Proprietary software is inherently bad for _practical_ reasons, not just for
philosophical/idealistic reasons.

Now, I'm not saying software developers should not make a living (I'm one
myself). It's just that we didn't solve the problem of getting income from
open source yet (as far as I'm concerned, the service model of Red Hat, IBM
and others is irrelevant).

~~~
ced
It's not _inherently_ bad. There are trade-offs. Yes, proprietary software
carries increased legal risks. OTOH, it is often better precisely because
there is more incentive to build it than to build OSS.

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aston
Pretty sure it's not " _the_ MVP," but " _an_ MVP," among thousands. This
story is being overhyped to the max.

