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> There's no reason for drivers to have an expiration date If you can license software with a definite expiration date, why can't you license hardware with a d
by solatic 9y ago
> There's no reason for drivers to have an expiration date
If you can license software with a definite expiration date, why can't you license hardware with a definite expiration date? And have your license enforced by the operating system? Imagine that I'm a company with a hardware product, and instead of selling that hardware at large expense, I rent it out, and provide drivers with an expiration date to enforce the terms of the hardware lease. If the lease is renewed, I'll provide new drivers with a new lease expiration.
Not that I'm arguing for hardware licensing, or arguing that it was what Oculus was trying to achieve and screwed up somehow. But there's a difference between "Microsoft built a feature some of their customers didn't know how to use" and "Microsoft built an anti-feature".
- wtallis 9y agoThe driver signing system is not an effective way to implement an expiration date, if that is your goal. Driver signing enforcement can be disabled rather easily by skilled users. Licensing restrictions written into the code of the driver itself are harder to bypass. It also does not seem at all likely that Microsoft intended for the driver signing system to be usable as a time-based DRM mechanism like this.