When we mention Windows Phone 7 here, it’s not usually with awe or enthusiasm. After all, Microsoft’s “ambitious plan” entails climbing into the number three spot over the course of the next two years. Nonetheless, the device and platform have their strong suits. We’ve already mentioned that their app market is growing at an astonishing rate. In fact, just recently, Microsoft released the good news that 5,000 applications are now available on their market. Want some even better news? Pirate-loving users can now get each and every one of those apps for free.
As reported over at WP Central, developers have been complaining about a weakness in the marketplace that has the potential to open the floodgates of piracy. Clever users who know the development system would be able to readily hack into applications, downloading any that they felt like receiving without paying a dime. According to many of these developers, though, their complaints were falling on deaf ears.
So one developer took a unique approach to showing Microsoft that this was a very real, very definite issue. This developer spent about six hours of his time constructing a simple application — which literally lets users nab any application they’re in the mood for, porting it directly to their unlocked phone, with all security features completely torn off.
This application is titled FreeMarketPlace, and it’s not going to be made available to the public. Rather, it was intended as a “proof of concept” to show Microsoft that this threat to developers’ properties was substantial, easy to tap into, and absolutely needed to be addressed. Still, with these flaws so readily visible — and more widely promoted — it’s not at all unlikely that copy-cats will be taking even greater advantage of the holes in Microsoft’s system, unless the company patches them up first.
