Microsoft and the WGA failure

Many analysts, myself included, have been increasingly unhappy with the ham-handed way that Microsoft handles software piracy.

With Microsoft, beginning with Windows XP, your copy of the operating system had to be validated by Microsoft in order for all its features to work… or in some cases, for it to work at all.

When Microsoft released Windows Vista, they extended their Windows Genuine validation program making it more obtrusive and obnoxious… and in the process, extended the philosophy that all of their software is presumed pirated, unless the customer can prove, to Microsoft’s satisfaction, that it is legitimate.

You don’t have to look far on the Internet to find tales of woe, such as validated Windows Vista installations that were suddenly “unvalidated,” or systems that failed validation after hardware or software upgrades, or even after someone ran a disk utility.

I wrote about this last October in “Microsoft: Customers are presumed guilty,” but haven’t returned to the topic since there wasn’t much new to say. That’s changed, thanks to last week’s well-documented failure in Microsoft’s validation service. Here’s a forum discussion by Microsoft’s Phil Liu, program manager for Windows Genuine Advantage, about what happened.

I second the acerbic comments by eWeek’s Joe Wilcox, who writes, “I might be more sympathetic if Microsoft offered customers more ‘genuine advantage.’ But there are really no substantial differences in what Microsoft offers customers now than before WGA. The idea was to treat customers as special, to reward them for being honest by offering them extras. Instead, Microsoft has, for the most part, taken stuff that had been available to everyone and put a validation gate in front of it. Passing validation gets access.”

He adds, “Today’s WGA crisis—and it is a crisis for customers that failed activation/validation and also for Microsoft—spotlights what’s wrong with the piracy checks: Their very existence, and with them the presumption of guilt. I suppose Microsoft could use credit checks or security checks as examples of presumption of guilt, too. However, the measure should be Microsoft’s behavior and how its customers are treated.”

For another take on this, see today’s comments by veteran analyst Amy Wohl, who ponders the SaaS aspects of the validation service. She views Microsoft’s WGA failure as a SaaS failure, but specifically of Microsoft’s SaaS infrastructure. Amy does a nice job of puncturing John Dvorak’s knee-jerk reaction, published on PCMag.com, attacking the whole SaaS concept itself on the basis of the WGA fiasco.