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Microsoft flip-flops on Vista virtualization
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It was not surprising, then, when Microsoft started telling reporters and analysts that it was going to change the policy and allow lower-priced home versions to also be used. What was surprising to journalists, bloggers and analysts alike was a terse statement e-mailed Tuesday night from Microsoft stating that the company was reversing its plans and sticking with the old restrictions.
"Microsoft has reassessed the Windows virtualization policy and decided that we will maintain the original policy announced last fall," the company said in its e-mail. A company representative declined to comment further or say what prompted the move.
Once the domain of true geeks, virtualization is creeping into the mainstream. The technology, which allows multiple operating systems to run simultaneously on one computer, has become particularly important for Mac users who want to run Windows programs side-by-side with the Mac OS.
All along, Microsoft has been saying there are security risks associated with the latest generation of virtualization technology. Indeed, a researcher showed a program at last year's Black Hat security conference that showed how virtualization could allow malicious code to operate invisibly, similar to a rootkit. And, in discussing its plans to ease the restrictions, Microsoft said it still had security concerns, but had concluded it was better to let users decide whether to take on those risks.
But analysts have questioned the tie between the security issue and the licensing restriction. The security risks apply to all versions of Vista. Similar risks might even be present if someone were running another operating system in a virtual machine, whether that is Linux or Windows XP, properly licensed in all its major versions to run inside a virtual machine.
Paul DeGroot, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, said the licensing agreement, which few people read, is the wrong place to set security policy. "If you want to make your product more secure, then make your product more secure," he said.
"We haven't received any more information either. It's a little odd."
As it stands now, only the full versions of Vista Business and Vista Ultimate are properly licensed to run as a "guest OS"; that is, inside a virtual machine. Vista Business sells for $299, while a full copy of Ultimate fetches $399.
DeGroot said he had welcomed Microsoft's plans to allow the Home Premium and Home Basic versions to act as guest operating systems. "I thought they were good changes," he said, adding that Microsoft's licensing terms seem arbitrary to him.
They have also been irksome to many others, including companies like VMware and Parallels, which sell virtualization software. When Vista debuted in January, Parallels posted a blog highlighting the licensing restrictions and what they meant for its customers. In February, VMware issued a white paper highly critical of Microsoft's policies.
Given all the feedback Microsoft had been getting, and apparently was keen to accommodate, it's not clear what prompted the last minute flip-flop.
"It just sounds like somebody put the brakes on hearing about this, (someone) who had not been part of the initial decision," DeGroot said. This is pretty curious, though, since changes to the Windows licensing agreement are not made lightly and typically get thorough scrutiny, including a review for antitrust issues by Microsoft's legal team.
Even Microsoft's partners have gotten little explanation. As part of its planned announcement, Microsoft had talked with Parallels, securing a quote from one of its executives praising the deal. Like the rest of the industry, Parallels was left scratching its head over the about-face.
"We haven't received any more information either," said Parallels director of corporate communications Benjamin Rudolph. "It's a little odd."
VMware founder and chief scientist Mendel Rosenblum said he doesn't comprehend Microsoft's security arguments.
"I have been perplexed by this supposed security risk," he said in an interview Wednesday. While he said the idea of malware being able to evade detection "sounds really scary," there are ways to detect whether such code is running. "As a rootkit, it's a bust," he said.
"I understand Microsoft has a right to put anything they want in the licensing agreement," Rosenblum said. "When they try and justify it with something in the technology, it doesn't make any sense to me."
It's not the first time Microsoft has changed its mind. Microsoft has already made one change to the Vista licensing terms in response to concern from enthusiasts. When it first announced its policies, Microsoft was planning to limit the number of times a boxed copy of Vista could be moved from one machine to another. The company quickly backtracked, saying as long as it was never used on more than one machine at a time, users could transfer boxed copies of Vista as often as they wanted.
Usually, though, when Microsoft changes its mind, it is to respond to customer feedback. In this case, Microsoft said it wanted to give users the choice, only to then reverse course. Analysts speculated that business concerns, in addition to security worries, were behind Microsoft's initial decision, as well as its last minute change of heart.
Indeed, virtualization poses an interesting set of business issues for Microsoft, particularly in that it involves Microsoft's crown jewel--its Windows desktop franchise.
On the one hand, Microsoft stands to gain some additional revenue, either from Mac users who historically weren't paying for Windows at all, or from Windows users who want to run more than one copy of the operating system at a time.
"Virtualization has the opportunity to dramatically increase Microsoft's revenue on the desktop," DeGroot said. "Regardless of what (version of the) OS people put on, it is additional sales of Microsoft's most profitable product."
But Microsoft also may see hidden dangers to its business model from virtualization, which allows one computer to act as many. "I think what we are seeing is a company having a great deal of difficulty deciding what they are going to do with virtualization on the desktop," DeGroot said, adding that while other software makers are also facing this challenge, it is of paramount importance to Microsoft. "It's where they make all their profits."
See more CNET content tagged:
virtualization, restriction, virtual machine, licensing agreement, VMware
As for me, my choice is Linux.
people will use XP/Vista in a virtualized environment for the
purpose of migrating off of their OS over time. :-) Yee-haw!! Buh-
bye Microsoft.
If I were them, I'd be more worried about wine qualifying as a genuine copy of windows. ¦-)
;-)
The average consumer could care less whether or not they can run guest operating systems.
And if you think I'm any worse off for it, you haven't seen beryl, or learned how to use inkscape, the gimp, blender, etc. Seriously. I feel sorry for you guys, but do your problems affect me? Hardware drivers aside, not really.
I can do whatever the heck I want with my software. You can't do that with Windows? What else is new?
Intel Mac running Boot Camp and then run Vista. No virtual
machine needed. This will not stop anyone from buying a Mac.
It?ll just put Parallels out of business.
Microsoft's real reason for not wanting users to run Vista in a
?virtual machine? is they are worried that someone dishonest will
buy one copy of Vista and install it on multiple Macs via ?virtual
machine? software.
If it's a "virtual machine" there is no way for Microsoft's "Genuine
Advantage" System to tell if a license is running on "multiple"
pieces of hardware, probably because the "Windows OS" would
think multiple "virtual machines" are the same piece of
hardware.
Maybe Microsoft is seeing a Windows license getting ?the same?
updates downloaded multiple times. This would not be possible
if Windows XP/Vista were running on actual hardware.
But to me that's not the consumer?s problem, just because some
are dishonest. Microsoft should just come up with another
solution for updating for those who are running Windows Vista
on a virtual machine.
It?ll be interesting to see what happens in Vista?s next Service
Pack.
No it wouldn't. Parallels is a VM host. BootCamp and rEFIt are
boot loaders. There is a difference.
[i]"they are worried that someone dishonest will buy one copy of
Vista and install it on multiple Macs via "virtual machine"
software."[/i]
No. The only way that would occur is by copying and distributing
the VM itself as an "appliance", or by cloning the image entirely
(nevermind that Parallels prolly ties their VMs to a given install
serial number)... If I wanted to pirate Vista that badly, I could use
Xen or VMWare's free VM Server to make an appliance and pass
that around.
Nevermind the fact that Vista is already P2P'd from here to Hell
and Breakfast (and doesn't require any sort of VM, I find the
argument to be specious at best. Sorry; just the way it is.
[i]" This would not be possible if Windows XP/Vista were running
on actual hardware. "[/i]
I see a quickie search result page @ Pirate Bay that says you're
incorrect...
IMHO, I couldn't care less what MSFT does with Vista. I won't
have to bother with it professionally for at least 9 months (like
most other corps, mine said "no way, Jose'" to Vista.) At home?
Who needs it? I got Linux, FreeBSD, and OSX to more than satisfy
my home computing needs and wants.
/P
I don't have to worry about paying for anything but the raw hardware, but I think you know what camp I'm part of.
As long as people buy PC's with Windows preloaded, MS doesn't
care what anyone thinks, or installs later. They've already gotten
paid by the PC manufacturer.
Laugh on, clownboy
;-)
Competition.
I'm not conflicted at all. By the way, I use both Windows and Mac OS everyday. I bet WJeansonne doesn't.
Remember when Apple licensed their OS to Power Computing and UMAX who built excellent Mac clones? Apple didn't end the program because of stability issues, they ended it because they couldn't deal with the competition, especially when Power Computing beat them to market with the newest, fastest machine based on the latest PowerPC chip at the time. Apple picked up their toys and went home, pulling the plug on the license.
Who's really afraid of competition? Apple.
-Mister Winky
If I buy of copy of Vista the number of vm's is irrelevant. I should be able to make as many vm's of vista as I want. No matter how you slice it it's one person using one pc with one cpu one video card. And before you ask I'll tell you why I'd want to run more than one vm. I'm trying to study for my MCSE. Running vmware on linux with a copy of windows 2003 and two or three vm's is a much cheaper alternative to buying three pc's one of which would have to have enough power to run server 2003.
I'm so glad I switched. After 15 years of GPFs, blue screens of death, and weeks of wasted time performing upgrades, I have never looked back. My wife has to use XP for work, and it crashes EVERY time she uses it-- and that's with a full-time corporate IT department supporting her.
Windows is yesterday. OS X is tomorrow. You choose.
XPs stability was a breath of fresh air, compared to other Windows versions. Sure, we have had quite a few problems with the -registry-, and "WGA" is still causing nightmarish-problems on some systems... not to mention Microsoft-supports rude, insulting, and even deceptive, refusal to acknowledge some very-real problems (which, by the way, were later officially-acknowledged to be GENUINE-problems)... but, "stability"..?
I am curious, what seems to cause the crashes? Is it a particular type of application, or use, or is your wifes XP-computer, simply randomly unstable?
If a clean install (with no, or as little additional software, as possible) solves the problems... then it is, most-likely a, specific, software-related issue.
Are her network-admins installing any uncommon third-party software? Which anti-virus programs are they using?
If the system is still unstable after a fresh, minimal-install, then its probably a hardware, or hardware-specific-driver, problem... not, an XP-stability problem. It must be noted, though, that XP DOES also seem to rather ungracefully handle several types of network, and hardware, problems... (...which better error-handling, would alleviate).
But, I agree... Microsoft latest -licensing- "flip-flops" have nothing to do with "security".
Do you think they'll ever be a "Vista Phone?" Five versions of the same phone, security problems, and a lovely brown plastic case?
By contrast, Apple will ONLY allow you to run OS X on Apple hardware. No alternate hardware allowed. Worse yet, Apple allows NO VIRTUALIZATION of any kind, not even OS X on OS X.
So why the fuss about MS' decision, really? When Apple limits choice, the Apple fanboys say "because of stability" but when MS does something less restrictive, "it's profiteering." Do you really think Apple's restrictions have NOTHING to do with profitability?
I'd rather run a virtual OS X machine on Windows and a Dell that I can configure to my liking than virtual Windows on a Mac. Of course, Apple won;t allow it because they don't want the competition. Why is nobody complaining about this?
-Mister Winky
I agree that if you want to blame Microsoft, Mac fanboys have to blame Apple as well.
virtualization is more for necessity and not desire. OS X and
Linux users want access to less expensive, basic functionality
Vista to test development and/or run a few apps not available to
OS X or Linux users. OS X and Linux users are passionate about
their respective OSs and really don't have much desire or
passion for Windows OSs. Consequently, they don't want to pay
a premium when other options can be made available.
Apple does not license OS X so they may retain a superior user
experience. The Apple experience includes both software and
hardware which make it easier to deliver a fluid user experience
- absent of viruses, spyware and tons of bugs. Of course this
path has kept their market share low, but their users are willing
to pay a premium for it. They're more focused on quality than
quantity. It's too late for Microsoft, so why restrict usage?
Now here is Linux
1. It is great to use NOW and is always improving.
2. It is FREE!
3. Wide choice of distros.
4. Faster then Windows and I mean FASTER.
5. Various office suites to choose from.
7. For gamers there a thousands to choose from!
8. Endless productivity software.
9. Better security and freedom of choice.
10 Better browsers and freedom of choice.
11 Better search and freedom of choice.
12 Better mail and freedom of choice.
13. Ect. Ect. Ect.
Big stupid corporate BOZO's need not change and remove your Microsoft blinders.
All people who make 50,000 yrly and under THIS IS FOR YOU! Use Linux and take over the corporate world and send Bill Gates to selling pencils on the street. His reply? "I was a contender"
impression of Linux.
It seems like the most vocal Linux advocates are consistently the
least able to form a grammatically correct sentence. Typical
comments consist of incomplete sentences, needless
abbreviations, unnecessary repitition, arbitrary capitalization,
gross misspellings, brutally mangled sentence structure, etc.
I hope that the Linux community takes more care in their code
than in their advocacy.
It is in fact SLOWER than Windows on the desktop. Don't know how you define speed, but if look at boot time, application start up times, application responsiveness and application switching, it is indeed slower than Windows.
Saying that Linux is better than Windows on the 'desktop', is like saying GIMP is better than Photoshop.
Linux is also quite slow on the desktop compared to Windows XP
or Vista.
Openoffice is fairly crap, as is KOffice.
Browsers you cannot really compare because most are available
on Windows too, and the only Linux only one I can think of is
Konqueror, which is pretty poor on a lot of websites.
Better search? What? find / -name {your search query}
There is no way any distro of linux is ready for the average joe
blogs windows user, because editing a configuration file is not
in their understanding of using a computer. The closest 2 to that
are linspire and suse, but they arent quite there yet.
Linux on servers however......absolutely excellent.
And this comes from someone who uses Windows XP, Vista,
Debian and OSX regularly. ;-)
2. Free. . . hmm. . until I start thinking about how much it would cost to get another laptop so I can actually USE linux.
3. Wide choice of distros? What, one single distro is not configurable enough? Glad I can change things to my hearts content in windows w/o having to risk losing my data by installing distro after distro until I figure out what I want.
4. ?? I've yet to see this in real or fake life.
5. Hmm. . I can us MS office, Word Perfect, Open Office. . and various others on XP. In fact, I'm willing to bet that there are MORE choices for Windows than linux.
6. Yeah, linux makes you so lazy, you forget how to count.
7. Thousands. . .that's how many results for games on download.com when I was downloading stuff for my windows 3.1 machine years ago. Windows games are in the millions. Tell you what, name just one 3D action or FPS or multiplayer or strategy game for Linux that has name recognition among 10 people at my workplace.
8. Same for Windows. Come on, do you really think we're dummies? It's like seeing a car ad where someone says, 'Why are we better? Well, we have driver and passenger airbags.' (it doesn't count if everybody's got it).
9. Better security. . . I suppose that's to balance the general uselessness of linux.
10. Better browsers . . . uhh. . .what?
11. Better search. . . with what?
12. Better mail . . . really . . with what?
And in order to help seal his point, Ted Miller had to remind us over and over of the "freedom of choice" Freedom to choose what?
virtualization is more for necessity and not desire. OS X and
Linux users want access to less expensive, basic functionality
Vista to test development and/or run a few apps not available to
OS X or Linux users. OS X and Linux users are passionate about
their respective OSs and really don't have much desire or
passion for Windows OSs. Consequently, they don't want to pay
a premium when other options can be made available.
Apple does not license OS X so they may retain a better user
experience. The Apple experience includes both software and
hardware which makes it easier to deliver a fluid user experience
- absent of viruses, spyware and tons of bugs. Of course this
path has kept their market share low, but their users are willing
to pay a premium for it. They're more focused on quality than
quantity. It's too late for Microsoft, so why restrict usage?
MS is almost completely incapable of giving their users any control over MS software. It is not in their nature to give customers what they want, and are too used to telling them what they need.
It is a hard habit to break. And one they will need to if they hope to ever become relevant again. Of course, that will never happen with dinosaurs like Ballmer and Gates.
The only high profile MS exec that has shown any capacity for independent, critical though is Jim Allchin, but where is he today?
"I am not sure how the company lost sight of what matters to our customers (both business and home) the most, but in my view we lost our way. I think our teams lost sight of what bug-free means, what resilience means, what full scenarios mean, what security means, what performance means, how important current applications are, and really understanding what the most important problems [our] customers face are. I see lots of random features and some great vision, but that doesn?t translate into great products.
I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft. ... Apple did not lose their way. ..."
I would think the more code the more security issues.
No??
KB
Generally speaking, more code = more complexity = more bugs/security flaws/etc.
The only security issue they are trying to address is their own financial security.
It is like saying a car without wheels is in no danger of crashing-assuming that the wheels did not come off while it was moving.
The wheels did come off for MS while they were moving.
Linux and OSX has all the bells and whistles that Vista premium has but only a tiny fraction of the security and performance problems.
- Deja vu, Microsoft's stock-in-trade.
- by tfosorcim December 21, 2007 5:28 AM PST
- Does this ring a bell?:
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(71 Comments)'Way back in the stone ages, Microsoft came out with their last revision/update/service-pack/bug-fix
/[euphism-de-jour-meaning-we-didn't-do-it-right
-the-first-time] for win95.
Only hitch was that they claimed that this fix was too technical for the great unwashed masses (read 'you and me') to install, and could only be obtained by BUYING a NEW MACHINE with the win95 update.
(For you folks who'd like a possible lead on tracking down this Microsoft absurdity--but I repeat myself--, I seem to remember this was called 'Windows 95 Service Pack 5, Revision 4', or simply SP5R4, for short.)
Then MS came out shortly thereafter with Win98 for sale in a box. Guess what? Win95SP5R4, with just enough frivolities added so MS could answer anyone who screamed "foul".
Microsoft doesn't like you to remember.