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Vendor lockinVendor lockin is the process in which a vendor, almost mostly of closed source software, is trying all he can do in binding the customer to him. Several techniques are available:
All of this leads to a customer or user which must play the rules according to the vendor, i.e. updating to a new version (and of course paying for that update), even when the old version is working perfectly well. This is not acceptable, because the customer does not have any choice and is required to pay for each and every upgrade. Why does a vendor want lockin?Once upon a time, products from vendors were judged by their respective quality only. The vendor just did what he's good at, make the product the best quality possible, of course in respect to costs and eventually price of the product. That playground has been changed since then, as soon as vendors have gained multiple field of interest, not limited to one product only, and are able to use their products with existing market share to steer the user to those other products. Some examples of vendors and their lockin strategies. Of course, it's not a complete list, it is just showing why vendors do things which are on first sight illogical. Microsoft and their own formats. Microsoft is known is a company to control the whole spectrum of computerised processing: Windows on the PC, Word (Office) for word processing, xBox as a hardware game console, Visual Studio for developing (Windows) software, .Net as a framework for developing and distributing software, SQL Server for database's, etc. Also, Microsoft likes to enter the beneficial market of paid downloads, now largely owned by Apple. For this (but not restricting to this only), a number of new media formats have been created: wma for audio and wmv for video. There can be no technical reason for this: ogg for example, is technological superior to any other (closed) codec like mp3 or wma. Ogg is an Open Source codec both for audio and video. Because Microsoft practically owns the market of desktop PC's (percentage of Mac or Linux is still slim, but certainly rising), it's easy for them to make wma and wmv default for their own platform, Windows. In contrast, codecs for other platforms like Linux, are not offered by Microsoft: why should they, if they do, it will only encourage people using other platforms then the one they like everyone to use, i.e. Microsoft Windows. Codecs for wma do actually exist for Linux, but it's for the most part reverse engineering, with a minimum of help from the vendor, i.e. Microsoft. By encouraging other suppliers (music stores, film industry, etc.) to use wma and wmv, Microsoft can control the market of desktop PC's even more than they are doing right now, practically limiting the choice of operating system to basically one: Microsoft Windows. Apple with their players (iPod), computers and music store's. Apple is known as a technological thriving company, their software (OSx for example) and hardware reaches beyond doubt high levels regarding quality, security, design and usability. However, there's a hidden agenda: by creating a hype around the iPod, certainly a fantastic looking portable player, they would like users to use iTunes (as the only software to easily transfer music files to the iPod) and then downloading music from iTunes Music Store (iTMS) in Apple restricted format only, aac. In the end, maybe some buyers may even make the switch to their computers (Mac running OSx), because only on that platform, protected aac files can be played: aac is not given in license to any other software or hardware vendor. Sony with their players, music store's and record labels. Sony has a nice history is portable audio players, in fact they invented them with their Discman (working with music compact cassettes, that must be a long time ago!). Nowadays they make attractive portable players, respectable in the way of storage capacity, looks, battery life, etc. The only and major drawback is that you have to use special software (Atrac) to transfer files to the player, as explained in the portable player section. Even when you are transferring mp3's to the Sony player, the Atrac software converts them to a format which is not playable on any other player. Atrac actually does the same as iTunes: it leads you gently to their own music store, where you can buy music from the Sony record label. That's where it's all about, they own music themselves (in contrast to Apple who is only selling music which is not owned by them) and like to sell that music to you, of course is a copy protected format. What does it mean for the user?The user or customer has to choose. In basis, choice is good. But when a choice automatically means that other choices are implicitly made (choosing for wma and wmv basically means a choice for Windows, choosing iTunes music store means choosing for iPod and Mac, etc.), that's a bridge too far. It limits the freedom of the user. A user cannot do what he likes to do, combining for each and every playing field, the best-of-breed tools or devices. That's a pity. Making money is good, everybody must keep is chimney smoking. Making money by creating new and creative solutions for certain problems is good, everyone should be encouraged to do so. Making money through limiting a user or customer is bad. Can this problem be solved or reduced?Yes, it can. A user can reduce vendor lockin by choosing for formats, protocols and software which are truly open, i.e. based on Open Source software, not by name only. Examples for open formats are flac (Free Lossless Audio Compression) and ogg. An example for an Open Source operating system is, of course, Linux. For the audio server within the 3A concept, Slimserver is used as an Open Source streaming server. Open Source software does not have any strategy for vendor lockin. That's because Open Source cannot be owned by someone. Beyond doubt, when using such formats and software, barriers have to be taken, but once that's done, it's freedom, freedom and freedom.
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