I've been thinking about writing this for a while.
What is JRiver Doing?
People sometimes ask what we're doing or when we'll do something. I want to use this thread to describe what we do a lot of, and that's carrying a load for some other company.
To begin with, we have a lot of masters. A lot.
Operating systems
Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS. Are they updated? Maybe not.
Devices
Too many to name. Manufacturers, models, firmware variants. Hundreds, probably thousands.
Drivers, Firewalls, and Antivirus Software
These are shape shifting monsters. They crash our party every day.
Internet Security
We maintain a lot of servers, digital certificates, signing certificates, and so on. DNS. All of these have to allow our passage over the Internet.
Doing Our Job
When we get past these, we can write software. Well maybe. The development kits keep getting updated, and often without much thought to backward compatibility. Apple, in my opinion, is the worst at this. Android not so great either. Microsoft does a good job.
Approvals
Then "approvals" by the Play Store and App Store. Apple and Android have teams of people making sure our software won't violate anything that could cause them trouble. These teams create their own trouble. Getting something passed can take a lot of time, and often they don't tell us enough to fix their issue.
Copyright
Copyright smokescreens also prevent us from delivering you what you expect. Youtube, for instance, allows some things, not others, and their mechanisms change purposely to prevent our playing them.
Mail
Our mail is often blocked. When we send news of what we're doing to people who gave us their email address, we have to work around rules and limits. Yahoo is very bad about this. Critical business email gets dumped into spam folders. Registration problems for JRiver and its customers.
Innovation
In the end, I think we spend at least half our time on problems that other companies create.
Why does it matter? It gives Google and Apple and other big players an advantage and prevents small innovative companies from doing what they are good at: INNOVATE.
The truth is that they don't want small companies to do that. They've come to expect that they are the leaders of technology. They will dominate whenever they can. And by whatever means necessary.
I'm concerned that the circle of bad guys attacking and good guys defending is causing security to spiral out of control and will eventually cripple the Internet, which was once a beautiful, magical place, where knowledge and innovation flourished. Security may become so tight that the Internet becomes Facebook.
