I always though an Aero was a very expensive way to buy air. However, it appears that my friends at Microsoft have another definition (another trade mark war looming like Apple vs Apple?). Aero is the name given to the ‘spiffy new graphics’ (sic) in Microsoft’s forthcoming Vista upgrade of its MS-Windows operating system. Two interesting snippets from this ZDNet news item:

• Aero will include special anti-piracy software to make sure users have genuine Microsoft licences
• Aero will require a whole new raft of fancy hardware to make it work

Let’s take this one at a time.

As a proponent of open-source software, I am 100 percent and more in favour of commercial software vendors clamping down on software pirates with the full rigour of the law. Why should honest open-source developers face cut-price competition because Microsoft is too lazy to pursue pirates? In particular, I think it is complely disgraceful and unethical than Microsoft turns a blind eye to software piracy throughout the third world. This only encourages people to become addicted to software they can never afford to buy, and discourages them from using open-source software which is completely and permanently affordable.

Next, I also appreciate that Microsoft has to generate significant profits if it is to keep two of its founders at the top end of the world’s rich list, and the best way to do this is to bring out new versions. If people are canny enough to stick with their perfectly adequate MS-Windows version n, Microsoft will get them eventually – the constant release of new versions will allow them to declare version n obsolete.

However, what is truly tragic is that all this new ‘eye candy’ requires additional computing power, encouraging people to dump perfectly good computers which have years of life left in them. The UK’s Department of Trade and Industry – that well-known Enemy of the Earth – is frantically trying to avoid having to implement the EC Directive on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) which would force businesses to consider the environmental costs of this reckless cycle of enforced obsolesence.

But even WEEE is only tackling the symptoms. The IT profession must address the root cause – unnecessary enforced upgrades to increasingly bloated and inefficient software. In particular:

Software vendors who withdraw support for software should be legally obliged to open-source the code

Society does not allow car manufacturers to restrict who maintains their cars. They are not allowed to arbitrarily decide that after so many years no-one is allowed to fix breakdowns ‘because that model is obsolete’. Software vendors have been allowed to build and abuse a monopoly position. This monopoly isn’t just costing money – because of the hardware impact, it’s starting to cost the earth too.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 18th, 2006 at 9:12 pm and is filed under Greenery, Open-source. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.