Rupert Goodwins' Diary

Thursday 5/10/2006

The big question about DRM is not whether it'll lock us into a grey, corporate future where every speck of creative freedom is crushed beneath a leaden mass of leech-like bureaucracy (memo to self: can one make leeches from lead?). Rather, it's whether that self-same heavy metal management will poison the body corporate of those who seek to impose it.

Let's look at the cheerleader for centrally controlled computing, our friends from the American north-west. In the same week Microsoft has announced that Vista will shut itself down if not authorised by HQ, it admitted to problems in its Windows Genuine Advantage program already deployed for XP. Due to "an issue on the Microsoft server side", some perfectly valid installations were failing their test for legality. There's a workaround, but it isn't pretty.

That information was published on a Microsoft hosted blog, which has a section for Windows Genuine Advantage problems, and one for benefits. At the time of writing, one of these sections has 2,347 threads and one just 178 — and I genuinely believe you'll be able to guess which has what. I've never found anyone outside Microsoft with a good thing to say about WGA, which just goes to show that there are limits to the Orwellian malleability of the English language, even in the hands of experts.

This perception of over-encumbered software that punishes the good while ignoring the scofflaws is just getting stronger — and it does nothing to persuade people who've made the jump elsewhere that they've done the wrong thing. My experience with Linux has not been one of unalloyed joy; in some ways, it's been a step back to some of the sins of Windows 9X in terms of obscure incompatibilities and badly-documented tweakage. In others, especially in reliability, speed and flexibility, Linux is up there with the best.

But the problems I've had to solve have been easier to fix due to the open nature of the software: they have been fixed — or, where they can't be fixed, definitively identified and avoided — and nothing has stayed hidden away. In particular, there are no extra layers of complexity added purely to prevent things happening, no misbehaving remote database that will turn my computer off, and my freedom to try out different approaches is in no way limited by my ability to keep paying out until I find something that works. That's a good feeling.

And it's that feeling — visceral though it is — of being back in charge, of having the power that goes with the responsibility of keeping my computers working well, that is the strongest agent of addiction. I don't think Linux is ready to kick Windows off the desktop, but the way things are going it may become the better option: the Windows Genuine Advantage may yet lie with the penguin.