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Comment by 4thjuly | Hacker News Reader

For recent examples I was thinking specifically about the Windows.Networking.NetworkOperators APIs and such. These APIs are 'private' to network operators. If you try to use them from a regular app then you'll be kicked out of the store.

Or search msdn for "This API is not intended to be used directly from your code" for examples of other APIs that are 'private' to Microsoft and will similarly get you booted.

Going back in time, there were (still are) a great many dlls and services in Windows with unnamed exports and not available to the general public (eg win32k, csrss, milcore etc).

Go back to the dark ages and as others have already mentioned there's the famous AARD example that used undocumented DOS data structures to distinguish MS-DOS from other variants.

Like I said, nothing new.

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>If you try to use them from a regular app then you'll be kicked out of the store.

Um.. That is not a private API. Those are the terms of the STORE, not the OS. You can use the API from whatever app you want. Although as a programmer I personally dislike such restrictions, its no different from what Google or Apple are doing for their own stores.

>Going back in time, there were (still are) a great many dlls and services in Windows with unnamed exports and not available to the general public (eg win32k, csrss, milcore etc)

What the... What are you talking about? Those DLLs are internal OS DLLs. Nobody besides OS components has any use for those APIs.

>Go back to the dark ages and as others have already mentioned there's the famous AARD example

Which never shipped since it was part of a windows beta version.

>Like I said, nothing new.

You can say anything you want ofcource. You'll have to bring actual evidence if you want to be taken seriously though.

That's why I put 'private' in quotes. Given a decent debugger, nothing is strictly private but then it's a meaningless distinction. Perhaps there's a better term for APIs you can technically call but will get your app kicked out of the store for TOS violation? I think 'private' makes sense but I'm happy to use whatever term you think is reasonable.

As for 'internal OS DLLs' I think it's subjective as to whether those APIs have any use outside of OS components (and indeed what constitutes an 'OS component'). I happen to think there's some really useful stuff in there. Anyway, I only brought it up to highlight that there are some things Microsoft has decided we can't use for whatever reason. Again, I think it's reasonable to consider them 'private', non-public, internal. I'm not saying any of this is good\bad or that they shouldn't have the right to do this sort of thing. Just that it exists.

As for AARD, technically it did 'ship' as the code was included in Win3.1 but was benign thanks to a runtime flag. Even in beta form it highlights that this sort of thing, relying on undocumented behavior, has been used at Microsoft for a very long time. Perhaps it's an insignificant example but it did cost them close to $300M in a settlement so seemed pretty relevant to me.

Anyway, I shall leave it to other readers to decide if any of this constitutes evidence of so-called private APIs by Microsoft.

Thanks.

>Perhaps there's a better term for APIs you can technically call but will get your app kicked out of the store for TOS violation?

So, first you make a claim about "since the early days of windows" OS APIs useful to others have been hidden that apparently only MS applications get to use. Yet you have failed to point out a single shipping microsoft application that benefited from those APIs or even actually mentioned what those APIs are or what they do. And now you're talking about some fringe windows 8 RT app store restrictions. Windows history spans from 1985 to 2013. Surely you should have hundreds of thousands of examples that you can google?

> Anyway, I only brought it up to highlight that there are some things Microsoft has decided we can't use for whatever reason.

Sorry. I still have no clue what are you talking about. Internal OS DLLs contain the implementation of the OS itself. Applications run on TOP of the OS. They don't re-invent what the OS already does.

I strongly suspect you're attempting to construct a non-technical argument about a purely technical topic. Anyway, I doubt you're going to present any evidence.. So, goodbye.

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