Company adds functionality removed from new Windows Vista, Microsoft responds by kicking their teeth.

Hello, rad ravers.  It’s August 16, 2007.  Sometimes, I hate my job, and sometimes it makes me feel pretty.  I’m on a wild rant, and I’m passing it off as news.

Going into 2006, Microsoft quietly announced that their new desktop operating system, Windows Vista, will be requiring all drivers to be digitally signed for the 64-bit versions.  Many of you may recall this message from your Windows XP machines:

This essentially means that Microsoft hasn’t looked over the driver, and dubbed it safe for human consumption.  Hardware for major companies would offer this message, and of course, we hit "Continue Anyway", because we really wanted to play with our new GeForce 666 videocard.  Microsoft’s change more or less means that anything that would make this message in Windows XP will outright fail (no, make that refuse) to install on any 64-bit version of Vista.  As a developer, that means you make sweet oral love to Verisign to the tune of $500 a year, then hand over every byte of driver code to Microsoft for analysis.  If you don’t, lots of people can’t use your hardware.  If you’re nVidia, that’s not too bad.  If you’re a hobby developer, it is debilitating.  As an end-user, you just bend over and take it repeatedly.

Many users refused to just "take it", and tools of sorts to dodge this limitation scattered over the web.  One such developer, Linchpin Labs, got serious and not only made a tool to do the job, but an all around useful tool for loading and unloading drivers on recent Windows operating systems in general.  In response, Scott Field of Microsoft annouced on August 3rd that the application, Atsiv, is classified as Malware.  Windows Defender was updated to detect and handle the application, and further steps were made in association with Verisign to revoke their certificate.  Lucky for Linchpin, they had formed a seperate company for the development of Astiv, and so the revoked certificate did not affect their other applications and services.

Atsiv was an advertised and marketed utility, even though it was decided to be released for free.  No source code was given to the public, and it did exactly as advertised with no hidden features or actions taken that the user might not be aware of.  The user specifically knew they were downloading an application to load drivers that may or may not be safe for their system, and had to install it by their own free will.  Still, Microsoft refers to Atsiv as "potentially unwanted software".  Scott Field also goes on to pat their collective backs by saying that they "were able to identify this issue and respond on multiple fronts, both with help from our partner VeriSign and with new signatures for Windows Defender".  Remind me to send him a cake.

• Linchpin Labs Response to Microsoft’s Classification of Atsiv
• This isn’t the first time Axel has had trouble installing yur mom’s face.