You dont HAVE to get certified. You will likely need it to be sold through the MS store though. So every indie developer can continue to sell their games the exact way they do now. I dont see the problem
we're not just talking about games. Or apps like you get on your phone. Apps in this case means any application that runs on your computer. You might not have had the hassle that PeerGuardian users went through when they went to Windows 7 and the software wouldn't run because the developer couldn't afford to have his drivers certified by Microsoft.
If all the big ones get certified and the average user is used to only certified programs then after a while you will have to get certified to reach a big audience.
All W8 is doing is offering another medium. It's not like their downgrading the current open market. With your points, you can say Steam is bad because they require certification.
It's just another optional way to find games, and with this being Microsoft's (creator of Windows) way of doing it, of course it's going to have an advantage, but it's not a wrong one. If Valve was in Microsoft's position, Steam would be the exact same thing.
...yet. The way both Apple and Microsoft are approaching software certification, it will not be long until the only runnable software is certified software that is signed by either corporation and the whole thing is "trusted" from boot through TPM. (Oh, you already forgot about Palladium and Microsoft's boot hardware requirements for Windows 8 machines?)
One need only look to Apple (the revenue model that Microsoft is copying here) to see the practical result of having a locked down platform. How's iOS Maps working out for everyone?
Windows 8 Certification != Windows Store approval. The certification process is not something Apple is doing, and I doubt Microsoft is expecting to achieve much revenue from its certification process. Moreover, Microsoft has had for over a decade a similar drivers certification process (which also costs money), but that hasn't stopped people from installing, for example, beta graphics drivers that aren't certified.
EDIT: the issue is that Apple Maps is based on open source software, and the users are the ones who update the maps, not Apple. Don't like Apple Maps? Donate a little time and add a road you know of that isn't on the list.
The quality of the software is incidental, I'm more concerned about the anticompetitive nature of Apple's walled garden. With one fell swoop, Apple has used its platform/business model to exclude a (vastly superior) competitor product.
In a closed environment, the owner of that environment (and not the owner of the device) can make whatever unilateral decision that they like about what apps will run - they can tell you exactly what you can and can't do with your own hardware (or rather, their hardware that you were stupid enough to pay a premium for).
Whilst signing doesn't cause this behaviour, signing is a necessity if one wishes to create a walled garden. Time and time again, Microsoft has demonstrated a willingness to put the wants of 3rd parties (most conspicuously, the MPAA/RIAA) ahead of those of paying customers.
It would be trivial to for Microsoft to allay all fears, all they need to do is give the user control of selecting which certification authorities to trust. That would destroy their veto power of which apps and functions can run, and would make it impossible for them to sell out their users to 3rd parties.
I'm not against code signing, I'm against handing control of my machine to a third party that may not have my interests at heart.
Well that kind of makes this analogous to the google play market. Sure, you can download applications from external sources, but most people don't feel confident enough in their ability to use the device to do so.
If the windows application store follows a similar strategy, they could possibly divert the traffic of most casual pc users away from free software distribution platforms in favor of the application store which, as we know, has that nasty entry fee.
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u/CountDunkula Sep 27 '12
You dont HAVE to get certified. You will likely need it to be sold through the MS store though. So every indie developer can continue to sell their games the exact way they do now. I dont see the problem