Slashdot Mirror
Media On MS Asking Slashdot To Remove Comments
The mainstream media has followed yesterday's story about
Microsoft Asking Slashdot to Remove Comments
with several stories. These include one from
The Washington Post,
Salon,
news.com
Wired, and
Linux Journal.
Finally, After Y2k has a comic (important, pecs shown in pixels may be larger than those in real life).
We've heard from Slashdot's readers, and we've heard from the press. I want to know how Microsoft's own employees feel about the ongoing Kerberos battle (not just the attack against Slashdot).
Upper management doesn't always reflect my opinions, and legal *absolutely* doesn't. Of course I can speak only for myself, but frankly I don't think your characterization of this Kerberos issue is at all correct.
I know a few people in the Win2k team, but I've never worked there myself. Of course their aim is to become the premier backend server, but honestly they don't think they *have* to fight dirty in order to achieve that. And I agree. Win2k really *is*, in my opinion, a far superior product. Hell, if I didn't think that about most of our products, why would I work here at all?
I know none of you have any trust left when it comes to MS. Sometimes your suspicions are just, but often I find that people's suspicions are based upon a weak foundation of reiterated rumours and second-hand false characterizations. For people who already believe (despite evidence) that NSAKEY is a government plant, that FrontPage Extensions has a "weenies" backdoor (it's actually a bad attempt at encryption), that Win2k has 65000 real bugs, and so on, the slightest hint that MS is up to dirty tricks with Kerberos is enough to convince them.
Personally, when the NT team tells me that their implementation is interoperable with MIT's reference implementation, when they tell me that they have managed to get interoperability in mixed environments, and when they assure me that this was a bad PR move rather than a malicious plot to kill Samba, I believe them. I work on the inside and when I weigh the truthfulness of the people I work with against the eagerness of Slashdot to inflame passions against us, I'm inclined to side with MS.
Now, don't get the impression I always agree with the company. Many times I don't, and I've almost been fired for being a little too rude in expressing my difference of opinion. But in this case, I'm going to side with the people who think the Samba team is paranoid and the slashdot crowd is attacking when it should be pausing for reflection.
Now, as to the legal thing: dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb. But only because it obviously is terrible PR, not because I think they're wrong. If I could have my way, the proprietary extensions (it wasn't the entire Kerb spec, if you actually read the doc - just the extension struct) would have been published without a legalese watermark and click-thru, but I can't have my way, and the fact is that those comments did infringe MS property rights.
Would you all be happier if MS had never published the extensions at all? Perhaps you would, because then you could reverse engineer without contamination. But while you see this release as a deliberate ploy to kill Samba, I see it as a stupid move by legal, and I, unlike some, am equipped with the capacity to forgive stupid people for their stupidity.
So, basically, my answer is: I don't agree with you. If I did agree, would I be out the door? Maybe. But most likely, I will stay at MS until I am convinced their products are no longer the best. And with our current lineup and the project I am working on, I don't see that happening for a long time.
yours,
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
Slashdot wins.
Even if the case goes to court, Slashdot wins.
Even if the case goes to court and MS wins, Slashdot wins.
Even if the case goes to court and MS wins and gets exclusive IP rights to Kerberos and the Justice Department feels so sorry that it decides not to break them up after all Slashdot... um... breaks even.
Because it's clear that the public is on our side now. These articles are not presenting Microsoft in a favorable light. They are giving a good accounting of open source, explaining what MS did, and citing third-party lawyers who mostly seem to agree with us.
If this becomes a trial situation, what we're going to have isn't a lawsuit against Slashdot, but an honest-to-god test case. And with a test case like this comes public support, angry letters, and the ACLU and their army of mutant squirrels. It would be the best thing we could hope for if one of the first cases prosecuted under DMCA were something well-known and obviously unjust. As long as there's not some kind of backlash in the next few days, I think the long-term outlook is quite lovely.
- Michael Cohn
-----
Go ahead, blame me... I voted for Nader!
Here's a thought. Can the Kerberos group sue MS to prevent them from using the Kerberos name? Sun did the same with Java when MS "embraced and extended" Java.
Probably depends on the way Kerberos is licensed.
-- Ever notice that fast-burning fuse looks exactly the same as slow-burning fuse? I didn't... (Edgar Montrose)
Now that Microsoft has painted itself into a corner, here's what they can do... release their proprietary Kerberos extensions, and offer them to the standards committee. This way, they can back out of having to sue Slashdot, with all the awkwardness, bad press, and risk that presents, and maybe even earn a few brownie points in the community.
The cost is minimal... they lose a chance to "embrace and extend" a relatively minor technical standard. And the risk is tremendous... if this really does go to court, besides the fact that MS will be painted as jackbooted thugs even by the mainstream press, there is a significant chance that it could lead to a precendent-setting ruling that is not in MS' favor. Simple risk analysis says they should back off.
It'd be nice to see, just once, that Microsoft can learn from its legal mistakes. But more likely, the psychology of paranoia will drive them to even bigger and clumsier mistakes, until the drive to win at all costs destroys Microsoft, as surely as the tragic hero of a Greek drama.
--
Hand me that airplane glue and I'll tell you another story.
Employees of Microsoft, does your company's upper management and legal department speak for YOU? Microsoft is effectively declaring war against open engineering standards and the progress that open standards foster, an openness enjoyed by all other engineering disciplines. How do YOU feel about that?
So, post anonymously if you feel you must, but post and tell us YOUR position! Or are you all to stricken by Redmonditis and your own FUD tactics to let the world know how you feel?
If the brass at Microsoft does not speak for you, let yourself be heard. If you (and all of us) are lucky, the Microsoft "spies" that allegedly lurk on Slashdot might see how their employees feel. And maybe, just maybe, Gates and the rest will hop on board the cluetrain next time it stops in Redmond.
I would like to propose an ammendment to that. Courts might frown on totally exclusionary clauses but Slashdot could sell -licences- to sue, thus making it non-exclusionary, and providing an extra source of income. Slashdot could then patent the process of suing without a licence. Anyone who sued them (without a licence) would then be in violation of the EULA and the patent. And anyone who -did- have a licence will have paid enough to cover costs, any penalties, pay for the period, and a luxury cruiser.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
"Monopolies cannot come to exist without the assistance of government".
I think, in this case, it relates to absurdly overbearing patent and copyright protection.
Instead of breaking it up into smaller versions of itself that may each continue to act like the parent, why not take away the weapon that allowed them to get into the dominant position?
As punishment for being found guilty of unfair monopolistic business practices, the US government should permanently invalidate all copyrights and patents held by Microsoft.
2) Distributing copies of (c) material without the cp-holder's consent is illegal. This gives MS a reason to write to /. and demand the removal of the messages, links, etc.
Put 2 and 2 together ... you can get around the copyright problem quite legally in ANY case of information distribution by simply LEARNING from the original work, and rewriting your own work! If someone studies the Kerberos file that is now publically available, and then writes up what they have learned IN THEIR OWN WORDS, MS has no control over that writeup.
So for anyone out there with technical knowledge on the subject, and more time than I have, make such a writeup and post a link to it here. Lets see MS try to put a stop to that!
If you put your name on it though, you'd better make sure that there's no way you can get caught on having 'agreed' to some trade secret contract though. Maybe release it anon just to be safe, or at least have proof that you read the MS document from a publically available source WITHOUT agreeing to a trade secret contract. I know it's been mentioned that there is legal precident that this CAN'T be a trade secret anymore, but better safe than sorry I always say.
Oh, and IANAL, and my apologies if someone's posted this idea already. I don't have time to read everything, but I just had to get this idea out.
You know what to do with the HELLO.
You know what to do with the HELLO. ...
Help create an open-source world
Unfortunately, you're right. The only purpose of the proprietary extension to Kerberos is to hide important authentication functionality, in order to keep Free software from fully interoperating - more to the point, to keep Samba from being able to act as a Primary Domain Controller for W2K.
But at some point, they still need to do risk analysis... is the risk of having key parts of the DMCA thrown out for First Amendment violations worth the benefit of keeping Samba from being a domain controller?
--
Hand me that airplane glue and I'll tell you another story.
Why not fight M$ with their own methods?..
I propose that from now on (using a click-through agreement of course) slashdot readers/posters must agree not to persecute slashdot in any court american or non american and that no material posted on slashdot is allowed to be used in any legal way to fight slashdot, it's owners, it's readers, it's posters, their friends, pets and whatever.
It's partly a joke, but so is M$'s EULA. So please give it a thought...
Thank you.
//Frisco
--
"At the end of the journey, all men think that their youth was Arcadia..." -Goethe
$HOME is where the
-- silver_p
Was MS expecting for the mainstream media to pick up this story? Were they expecting this kind of reaction - or did they think that the editors at /. would automatically comply with their demands?
/.? They are the most vocal about protecting the First Amendment - especially in David & Goliath situations like this one.
Now, in light of the increasing attention to this story, I wonder what MS's next statement on the issue will be. The more attention it gets, the harder it will be for them to back down - but it will also be all the more necessary for them to do so. This situation can only hurt their current status with the DOJ - especially now that they are in the remedy stage. You just have to know that the judge is watching stuff like this closely.
What I am really waiting for is a reaction out of groups like the ACLU - have they contacted anyone, or are there any indications that they are going to make a support statement for
Check out Magic Firesheep!
http://www.wired.com/news/b usiness/0,1367,36313,00.html
Excellent point, and it shows the importance of trademark and certification mark in free software. While there's a strong argument to distributing spec and code in free software, there's an equally strong argument to retaining and reserving the rights to the trade name of the product being released.
One of the better ways to do this is to provide a regression test for the software in question, requiring it to meet the test. Microsoft, in this world, would be free to embrace and extend all it wanted, and would have free access to the source to do this. However, unless they met the terms for the trade name usage, they would have to call the product by some other name -- defeating the whole marketroid check-off item school of product promotion.
Many free software firms and propenents don't yet see the importance of this. Sun Microsystems in particular has just plain got it wrong in attempting to enforce compliance through code regulation rather than certification marks and compliance/compatibility testing. Very frustrating, as I've worked with some of the folks involved in the SCSL concept. IMO most of the issues Sun has seen in licensing Java would be non-starters had they used an alternative approach. As things stand, they're fighting with Microsoft for the standard, while IBM emerges as the market leader in workable Java implementations.
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
Scope out Kuro5hin
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
Only through hard work and perseverence can one truly suffer.