On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 3:48 PM, Keith Medcalf <kmedc...@dessus.com> wrote:
> > >You have a system with a bunch of apps installed. You then upgrade to > >a new version of the operating system and a whole bunch of the apps > >break. Do you think people blame the apps or the operating system? > >Do you think anyone takes the apps apart and blames them for using the > >wrong apis despite documentation to the contrary? > > This is kind of begging the question. There is lots of software that runs > perfectly well on *all* 32-bit capable versions of Windows. This is not > particularly hard to do, you just have to not do stupid things. If the > application has problems that is an application problem, or an application > design issue. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the Operating System. > > Quite frankly, it is a Microsoft strategy to force application > incompatibility, and something Microsoft sells as a "feature" to their > ISVs. Each new Microsoft "thing" is sold to ISVs with the promise that "if > you use this new buzzword technology, which we have paid handsomely to have > the pundit and magazine writers claim is the greatest thing since sliced > bread" we can guarantee you that your customers will keep coming back and > buying the same product over and over and over again because we will > "embrace, extend, and make incompatible", deliberately, with each version > and patch, in order to bolster your revenue stream. It is also sold to > Enterprises on the same basis, because that ensures that the IT Department > will has to be continually staffed (big = more underthings = higher paid > execs = bigger budgets = bigger bonusses) with throngs of people to keep > running along the Microsoft designed incompatibility treadmill. > While there is some truth to this, it is more nuanced. There are bugs & misfeatures that Microsoft maintains specifically not to annoy paying customers, and there are undocumented APIs that developers have discovered and used (not just in Microsoft, but certainly they have the best chance of accessing those undocumented APIs) that Microsoft maintains some level of compatibility with just to avoid breaking selected apps some customers depend on. Linux, BSD, whatever, caters to a technical crowd. If those developers decide they want to change the kernel API / ABI at every release, it is not the end of the world. They hold less than 10% of desktop systems (depending on the source). Windows caters to a much later audience, many who have no technical expertise, much less source code to recompile software when operating system changes break applications. Even if the applications are the real source of the problem (using undocumented APIs or depending on bugs) that doesn't matter to customers. Frankly, given the vast array of hardware that Windows tries to be compatible with, and all the permutations of hardware & drivers & such, I think it is a miracle they that succeed as often as they do. Do they make stupid decisions / choices at times? Sure. Everybody does. But that doesn't mean they are all incompetent or stupid. I dare say DRH would like to (and has said as much IIUC) go back in time and make changes that were set in stone years ago, but he specifically does not do it to maintain backward compatibility. Heck, if nothing else, I'm sure he'd love to go back and eliminate every bug that has forced a patch update. -- Scott Robison _______________________________________________ sqlite-users mailing list sqlite-users@sqlite.org http://sqlite.org:8080/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sqlite-users
