[General Topics] quicksite:
Chainfire, such a thoughtful and thorough response as the one you gave above deserves equal thoroughness in reply. That won't be in this message due to time constraints. But I am genuinely shocked that your advocating for using this opportunity (the opening of Windows Marketplace) to provide developers with a better anti-piracy scheme, plus usage tracking information, by having this critical discussion now, is being bashed. How absurd.

It's clear as day to me that:

(a) you'd like to see the development community, in full cooperation with Microsoft, take this once-in-25-years opportunity we have right now, to address this whole licensing, authentication, copy protection, access to usage tracking demographics information, end-user key replacement process & system, and come with a better scheme that is win-win-win: good for developers, good for end users, and good for the distributor (MS) ...

(b) you have tested and hacked into the MS Windows Marketplace system as a means of assessing what depth of security system they have in place...

(c) ... and, in so doing, you found it ridiculously way too easy to hack into Windows Marketplace...

(d) thus raising deep concerns about the quality and design of Microsoft's whole anti-piracy system for Marketplace app developers.

(e) You proved this by publishing how easily you cracked the system...

(f) ... in the hopes this will wake up the players in the whole system -- particularly app developers and Microsoft -- to find better solutions that benefit all, and do it NOW, while Marketplace is minimally stocked and operational.

I just am just stunned you say you are being attacked for doing this.

This is what people MUST do, at various stages of change in any industry, to help influence the design and carry-through of a fair and workable system. It happened when VHS and Betamax were in development stages, and in that case both innovators chose to go their own ways (which was surely good then, because it was to early to constrain innovation). It happened when the entertainment industry tried to get a handle on the ease of duplicating video tape. It happened at the time of DVD development and which resolution and compression standards would be adopted. It happened in the fight over the ease of DVD duplication, which lead to the creation of a Region-based distribution system. It happened in the HDTV development community to try to obtain agreement about a line-resolution standard. It's happened with Apple & iTunes.

And you're just saying this convocation should be taking place here as well, as the industry faces a sea-change where development for mobile devices will surely overtake and bypass development for desktop applications, changing all the dynamics of selling, distribution, end-user delivery, etc.

Got it. So very easy to grasp.

Has nothing whatsoever to do with an "event" called "Hey look everybody, I was able to exploit a weakness in MS's Windows Marketplace, behold!".

As you now can tell, my own response here was about advocacy for the end user, agreeing that there is a potential big problem, but also the perfect opportunity to FIX the broken CURRENT system.

You are advocating for the developers.

The missing party to the table are the Distributors, in this case, Microsoft. How do you propose to flag them down to bring them to the table, asap?