Withdrawing from the Microsoft MVP Program

After 15 years, I’ve decided to withdraw from the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional program.

The program just isn’t interested in supporting Windows driver developers, and it hasn’t for many years.

You can read more about my thinking here.

Peter

It seems MS is killing off everything that people were interested in, except web developers.

Although not an MVP, I feel your pain as I watched MS completely abandon the embedded realtime market segment, essentially ceding this to Linux. I know: Windows IoT, but that will never measure up for true embedded realtime. The driver model is just absolutely too heavy for embedded.

It’s a shame, but I’m almost entirely Linux now. Linux is sometimes frustrating and seemingly disjointed with no single entity to go to get answers. As I have become more familiar with it, I’ve learned I don’t NEED to always run to a single definitive entity for answers: I have the source! I can tailor the code to my specific piece of hardware. Even with Windows Embedded Compact I couldn’t do that.

I wish MS would come back around to supporting the technical developer, but I fear their entire focus is now mellineal Social Media, Web everything developer.
Just my $0.02 (USD) worth.

Sad day indeed,
Greg

Microsoft’s loss. They should be flying you around in the company’s G 550
for all you’ve done :slight_smile:

On Mon, Apr 8, 2019 at 3:48 PM Peter_Viscarola_(OSR)
wrote:

> OSR https://community.osr.com/
> Peter_Viscarola_(OSR) started a new discussion: Withdrawing from the
> Microsoft MVP Program
>
> After 15 years, I’ve decided to withdraw from the Microsoft Most Valuable
> Professional program.
>
>
>
> The program just isn’t interested in supporting Windows driver developers,
> and it hasn’t for many years.
>
>
>
> You can read more about my thinking here.
>
>
>
> Peter
>
> –
> Reply to this email directly or follow the link below to check it out:
>
> https://community.osr.com/discussion/291236/withdrawing-from-the-microsoft-mvp-program
>
> Check it out:
> https://community.osr.com/discussion/291236/withdrawing-from-the-microsoft-mvp-program
>

After 15 years, I’ve decided to withdraw from the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional program.

Hold on - does it even exist for driver developers? I was under the impression that MSFT had abandoned this program for DDK/WDK at least a decade ago. At least I can recall actively “contributing” to quite a few flaming threads centered around this “sensitive topic”.
Furthermore, I can also recall taking the piss out of our “Windows fanboy” for signing as “MSFT MVP on DDK and Driver Development” years after the above mentioned program had been abandoned by MSFT…

Anton Bassov

It seems MS is killing off everything that people were interested in, except web developers.

Well, this trend is more than 20 years old. It all started in the userland. Kernel-mode development was relatively immune to it up to certain point, but around 2006-2007 this trend was extended into the kernel as well (PatchGuard, driver signing,etc)…

MS completely abandon the embedded realtime market segment, essentially ceding this to Linux.

Unless you are speaking about Windows CE, neither Windows nor Linux is really suitable for the realtime development. In fact, I would say that unmodified Linux is even more unsuitable for this purpose than Windows NT is.

The beauty of Linux is that you can tailor it to your needs. In this context it means running it as a task inside your RT kernel. You don’t necessarily have to move it to the userland, but you have to provide your own arch that cedes the actual control of interrupts, spinlocks and timers to your custom RT kernel, effectively virtualising them as far as Linux is concerned. You have to make its ISRs and bottom halves run it context of dedicated RT tasks that are controlled by your RT kernel, transparently to Linux. Whenever Linux code acquires a spinlock, your arch has to disable the preemption of above mentioned threads, rather than disabling the actual hardware and software interrupts.

This is the very minimum that has to be done…

Linux is sometimes frustrating and seemingly disjointed with no single entity to go to get answers. As I have become more
familiar with it, I’ve learned I don’t NEED to always run to a single definitive entity for answers: I have the source! I can tailor
the code to my specific piece of hardware.

Imagine combining these two, and adding a sound and extensible system architecture with the stable kernel API, as well as permissive licensing, to the whole thing. Sounds like a dream? Incredibly enough, but a system that offers all the above is almost of zero popularity among the developers…

Anton Bassov

On Apr 8, 2019, at 9:39 PM, anton_bassov wrote:
>
> Hold on - does it even exist for driver developers? I was under the impression that MSFT had abandoned this program for DDK/WDK at least a decade ago

It had been dropped, but it was restarted 5 or 6 years ago.

Tim Roberts, timr@probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.

It had been dropped, but it was restarted 5 or 6 years ago.

Not correct. Read the blog post.

There is no WDK MVP program. There is a Windows Developer MVP program. This includes people who develop office plug-ins and such. it also includes an odd corner competency named “Windows Hardware Enfineering Community” — In which I am currently an MVP — which is mostly about IoT and seems to be comprised of system builders who whine about distribution kits not being available when they should and the loss of Windows CE. It has has absolutely, positively, nothing to do with kernel mode development or drivers.

It’s unfortunate.

Peter

It isn’t just the MVP program. If you go to any of the various MSFT conferences, they are all about Cloudy mcCloudface and related microservices. MSFT has moved on. Drivers etc are mostly a legacy business. After tossing us all out of the MvP program, they did sort of re-invite everyone back in as “rmvps” (and I have forgotten what r stands for). It is pretty much as you noted, a bunch of invites to meat-greets with marketing peeps. I did get a VS sub and a cert out of it, so it isn’t a total waste :slight_smile:

rmvps

The MVP “reconnect” program.

“_The idea behind the program can be best described with an analogy from another industry: The Oscars…
There is a very similar concept in our MVP community that we are helping to formalize: once an MVP, always part of the MVP community! _”

/rolls eyes

I did get a VS sub and a cert out of it,

Well, shit. THAT’s worth about a grand right there. I’ll take it!!

Peter

> It seems MS is killing off everything that people were interested in, except web developers.

They abandon not only WDK MVP program.
Two years ago I sent to Microsoft’s Bounty Program undocumented trick which destroys Anti-Malware Protection - one of the Windows security technologies. The answer was about “it is not web security leak”.