The Next Twenty Years: What Windows 8's Closed Distribution Means for Developers

I wonder if MSFT will stop supporting SDK's that don't run through their store long term. At some point will you only be able to write things that run on Windows that go through the Windows store? It looks like Win RT is going to go that route. I think it will be hard for MSFT to totally shut that down on mainline Windows for a while, but longer term it might all look a lot like walled garden distribution across all Windows.<p>I imagine that MSFT will have some kind of enterprise program where you can run your own Windows Store Server to do enterprise deploys of Metro apps.<p>Either way, it looks like Linux might end up the one place where you can install and run your own software over the long haul.

I find it very impossible to believe that in 20 years there will be no "adult" games available.<p>For one thing the XboX is a very closed platform run by Microsoft and there is no lack of violent games available there. I imagine this part of the agreement is simply an oversight that will be corrected in one form or another.<p>The only other possible way that this could play out if MS stubbornly don't want to allow adult content on computers is that anybody who wants to play games will switch to another platform, be it Android or Ubuntu or whatever.<p>The most likely dangerous thing that this could do for game developers would be if MS took control of launch dates for third party games so that they didn't clash with games they planned to heavily promote themselves or with preferred partners.<p>So maybe if you're an Indie developer you can't launch a game during the Xmas period if Halo 6 is due to come out or something like that.

I don't get it.<p>Everyone is gushing about the post-pc era, Eric Schmidt announced a few days ago that Microsoft is irrelevant, and the article takes for granted that Microsoft and PC as we know it will survive for next 20 years, and Windows will be dominant platform on PC?<p>If history teach us anything, it's that there's always some solution for the problem. If Windows 8 marketplace turns to be too restrictive, game developers will turn to Steam on Linux. And with enough gamers on Linux, Asus or Gigabyte will not be pressed to make only "compatible with Windows 8" UEFI-locked motherboards.<p>Or the consumers (and the gamers) will find Win8 marketplace acceptable. Or maybe in five or ten years some other player will sweep the market.<p>Looking at the current technology and lamenting about the end of the world is just plain stupid.

FUD.<p>Desktop apps don't have to be distributed through Windows Store. In fact they can not. Windows Store contains only Metro UI apps, available for both tablets and desktops. All the software and games and stuff are installed exactly the same way as in other Windowses, without any restrictions implied by the article. Steam isn't going anywhere, Skyrim, Mass Effect are not, either. The problem does not exist.

I talked to the author about this article, but I don't buy some of what was said. I wrote up a rebuttal (<a href="http://digitalbalance.tumblr.com/post/33276814981/windows-8-is-just-as-open-as-windows-7" rel="nofollow">http://digitalbalance.tumblr.com/post/33276814981/windows-8-...</a>) when the author originally posted it.<p>Basically, IMO, the article didn't really have hard facts and was mainly just pushing slippery slope arguments. Whilst there's potential for this to become a closed platform, there's no evidence that it will be. The DOS/Win 3.0 similarity doesn't work because Win 3.0 did not close off the platform at all. There's been no precedence set on the desktop to close the platform off completely and I doubt it'd do MS any favours to do such a thing, especially when gamers will soon have Steam on Linux (which is the one thing stopping some gamers from moving from Windows to Linux).

With one anti-trust case behind them, and a loss (packaging IE as the only browser for those to young to remember), a single access point for all software would likely raise similar flags.<p>Apple can get away with it (or close to it) because they are still not the dominant platform.<p>I suspect we'll get to a point where the App Store, Google Play and Microsoft Store (not sure what Microsoft's is called) will be considered monopolizing the sales channel and be decoupled forcing competition in the store space, or allowing software to be installed without going through a store at all.<p>Thankfully we've got history on our side with installing apps from any source being the default behavior.

In what way are Windows 8 app certification requirements written in stone? If there are hundreds of millions to be made from changing some text, trust me, those rules will fall faster than Felix Baumgartner.

The original article link, from the author's own blog: <a href="http://mollyrocket.com/casey/index.html" rel="nofollow">http://mollyrocket.com/casey/index.html</a><p>(happens to be much more readable there, too)

So the point of the article is that because of the bundling of windows store and Metro UI, Windows will become a closed platform. Like with DOS, in some versions the desktop UI will vanish.<p>If that would happen, GNU/Linux would be the biggest remaining open (biggest free it is already) operating system. That would be a good thing. If Microsoft really tries to control Windows-Apps that much that they ban popular games, they probably will kill Windows and games will adapt to Linux. Fine with me.<p>But it doesn't have to come that way. The comparison to DOS is probably flawed. The new UI is, as far as i understood without being a windows developer, just an UI (with maybe a new API). The classical desktop is not like DOS an operating system Windows has to evolve from. Though it's quite possible that they might try to kill it sometime, it is not the same technical cause like the move away from DOS.<p>Anyway, before declaring Windows dead, let's wait how well Windows 8 sells and how many will use the new UI and the Windows store.

&#62; And these are just some of the features in this version of Windows. Who knows what new features Microsoft will add in future versions that will make desktop apps even less able to compete with native apps?<p>Slippery slopes are fun to think about, but are difficult to form a logical and rational argument with. You can't base decisions on a slippery slope. All we have are the facts currently available today.<p>Today we have one version of Windows being sold. Next week we'll have three (Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows RT)! What if the week after that we end up with six versions of Windows?!

What about open source software? How about applications we might write for ourselves?<p>OS X Mountain Lion is a little fussy about apps from the Internet that did not come from the APple App Store, but it is easy enough to override this default on an app by app basis.<p>I would hope that Microsoft would also allow users to override this restriction. e.g., installing Emacs.

How come I could install chrome and get a metro UI on windows 8, even though it didn't go through Microsoft's store?<p>I keep reading that windows 8 distribution is limited to the ms store for apps with metro UI , but that doesn't seem to be the case from my limited experience.<p>Can anyone clarify?

is there really no way to "side-load?" According to this, that will be enabled in the Server and Enterprise editions:<p><a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12008252/sideloading-apps-on-windows-8-pro" rel="nofollow">http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12008252/sideloading-apps...</a><p>Between this and UEFI secure boot these guys are really messing up the PC ecosystem.

Windows 8 is the Oogieloves of operating systems: no one wants it, but that doesn't stop its creator from pushing it hard.

In my opinion the only reason a closed system like Windows is still so dominant is the open nature of it's software distribution. Close that and the masses will move away. I write Windows apps purely because there are no restrictions on distribution/deployment, and because of the huge user base. When the status quo changes, I move.

is it legal to make an installer that would explicitly add a self-signed certificate to be able to add the application?<p><i>assuming there would be a way to distribute that installer other than microsoft's store</i>

We shit on Microsoft for this but with iOS it's somehow OK?

Saying that closed software ecosystems are bad because they hurt games is like saying the Nazis were bad because they made it harder to find good Jewish rye bread. It's like... um... way to focus on the important stuff, Mr. Muratori.