Microsoft is pretty terrible with names (Microsoft Secure Content Downloader)

MKR

http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/07/microsoft-embra.html

tl; dr: Microsoft creates bittorrent clone, and gives it a terrible name (Microsoft Secure Content Downloader).

What is it with Microsoft and naming? Surely they can afford a marketing firm! Popfly is a pretty rad name. Why don't they just hire the guy that came up with that?

This thread is actually about Microsoft's BT clone, and pondering on why they would even bother when there's a perfectly serviceable distributed download thing (BT) available to embrace and extend.

Elbonian Man

Because proprietary means money. The more markets you control, the more stable your installed base becomes.

Irond Will

It's pretty clear to me that Microsoft wants to control the source on as many applications as possible, and especially for software that is principally used for piracy.

Feral

What Irond Will and Elbonian Man said.

Step 1: MS creates closed source BT-like called MSCD.
Step 2: New version of Windows comes with a native embedded MSCD client.
Step 3 (a): MS says that to download Windows Updates, you have to use MSCD. Legions of corporate IT managers adopt MSCD.
Step 3 (b): MS says that to download any MS game demos, you have to use MSCD. Legions of gamers adopt MSCD.
Step 4: Release an MSCD server that only runs on licensed Windows Server products. (Make sure the EULA states that you may not use MSCD to link to pirated content.) Legitimate web services that want to use MSCD have to adopt Windows Server architecture.
Step 5: MS works with large ISPs to ensure that MSCD traffic is not deprioritized (as has happened with BT). MSCD is now faster than BT on many networks, spurring further voluntary adoption. More MSCD users means even faster downloads.
Step 6: Let the snowball generated by step 5 roll downhill for a while, while step 4 prints money.

Epilogue 1: Port MSCD to Mac and Linux, but let it remain buggy, crippled, and slower than the Windows version. Cackle maniacally as Mac users across the globe shake their fists in rage.

Epilogue 2: Target any website using MSCD to distribute pirated content with large amounts of legal anal-rapage. Such sites find themselves unable to hide behind the "we don't provide content, we just link to it" defense as they're in violation of MSCD's EULA. Governments that refuse to cooperate with efforts to shut such sites down get threatened with a virtual one-company trade embargo. "Fine, we don't have to localize Windows security updates to Russian. Have fun with your security holes."

Dusda

Okay Feral, that all made sense until about halfway through Step 3. Legions of corporate (I love how everyone adores plugging that word as though it is somehow derogatory) IT managers, eh? No sys admin with half a fucking brain just blindly adopts new things, especially ones that are forced upon them. Anywhere after that you're just blindly making shit up. Microsoft would never force people to receive their software in only one delivery system, let alone pretend HTTP transfers don't exist anymore. *sigh*

And even if they did, so what? Its all their own software anyway, they can do whatever the hell they want.

Wonder_Hippie

This is basically the standard MS approach to everything they do. Embrace, expand, extinguish. I think that's what they call it, at least. It was thrown around a lot in the monopoly case.

Feral

Dusda wrote: »

Okay Feral, that all made sense until about halfway through Step 3. Legions of corporate (I love how everyone adores plugging that word as though it is somehow derogatory) IT managers, eh? No sys admin with half a fucking brain just blindly adopts new things, especially ones that are forced upon them.

Uh, I have been a corporate IT manager (or at least I was until the last acquisition, now I'm just a "systems administrator" but hey its the same job with the same pay and better benefits so why am I going to bitch about the title and anyway I disgress). That was by no means meant to be derogatory.

And yes, corporate IT leadership tends to be conservative, but they will adopt new technologies when they have to. I didn't mean to imply that this would happen overnight, and MS has a looooong history of saying "either play with our ball or go home." Or more precisely, "either buy our ball or go home."

Dusda wrote: »

Microsoft would never force people to receive their software in only one delivery system

You mean like Windows Update? Which has never worked with anything but MSIE?

Try turning off Windows Update and setting Firefox to your default browser, then go try to download Windows Defender updates. It's okay, I'll wait here.

All they'd have to do is wait until MSCD had been on the desktop for a couple of years and then say "Oh by the way the next version of SUS uses MSCD to communicate with microsoft.com." The IT folks who are still suspicious would just say, "Well, shit, I dunno if I want that MSCD voodoo running on our LAN. Let's dual-home the SUS server and put it on the DMZ."

Dusda wrote: »

And even if they did, so what? Its all their own software anyway, they can do whatever the hell they want.

Sure. I'm just explaining to MKR why they'd release a closed-source competitor to a perfectly serviceable open-source alternative.

MKR

Feral wrote: »

Dusda wrote: »

Okay Feral, that all made sense until about halfway through Step 3. Legions of corporate (I love how everyone adores plugging that word as though it is somehow derogatory) IT managers, eh? No sys admin with half a fucking brain just blindly adopts new things, especially ones that are forced upon them.

Uh, I have been a corporate IT manager (or at least I was until the last acquisition, now I'm just a "systems administrator" but hey its the same job with the same pay and better benefits so why am I going to bitch about the title and anyway I disgress). That was by no means meant to be derogatory.

And yes, corporate IT leadership tends to be conservative, but they will adopt new technologies when they have to. I didn't mean to imply that this would happen overnight, and MS has a looooong history of saying "either play with our ball or go home." Or more precisely, "either buy our ball or go home."

Dusda wrote: »

Microsoft would never force people to receive their software in only one delivery system

You mean like Windows Update? Which has never worked with anything but MSIE?

Try turning off Windows Update and setting Firefox to your default browser, then go try to download Windows Defender updates. It's okay, I'll wait here.

All they'd have to do is wait until MSCD had been on the desktop for a couple of years and then say "Oh by the way the next version of SUS uses MSCD to communicate with microsoft.com." The IT folks who are still suspicious would just say, "Well, shit, I dunno if I want that MSCD voodoo running on our LAN. Let's dual-home the SUS server and put it on the DMZ."

Dusda wrote: »

And even if they did, so what? Its all their own software anyway, they can do whatever the hell they want.

Sure. I'm just explaining to MKR why they'd release a closed-source competitor to a perfectly serviceable open-source alternative.

Don't worry, I know all MS' tactics. :P

I was pretty sure of what was going on with it, I just wanted to check and make sure I wasn't being paranoid.