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Microsoft Openly Provides Kerberos Interop Specs
konstant writes: "Microsoft has published a document on its TechNet security site providing most of the information in the infamous CAB file plus sample code. There appears to be no onerous license this time." Well, it's not the *whole thing* but has lots of useful info about Microsoft's Kerberos implementation. Strange note: the page where this appears has a footer that says, "Last updated January 21, 2000," but when I did a search on Microsoft.com during our little tussle with them last month, I didn't find it.
Afaics the copyright notice does not prevent you from writing a SAMBA-style hack that interops with MS Kerberos. It does however prevent anyone writing commercial software which takes advantage of this. Preseumably that means that you wouldn't find an MS-kerberos workaround on a Red Hat CD, but for free off the Net? That ain't commercial.
I think this is M$ trying to put an end to the bad PR they recieved when they stuck their hand in the pengiuns nest, so to speak. Still, it's a step in the right direction... First open MS Kerberos, next... World Domination! (er...)
That must be a huge blow to them, who are used to being able to dictate to people what they would use and what standards would be supported. Imagine their fear that they are losing that control and must actually play nice with other operating systems and programs.
Finkployd
But this does makes you wonder.. Could it be that /.'s hassle with MS was just MS's way in following the saying "it doesn't matter how they talk about you as long as they are talking about you.", which they've done before? The last (afaik also proven) example of this behaviour was during the introduction of Windows 95. There were quite some rumours going on that the OS was massivly spread by hackers (according to the local news, we call 'm warez weenies) but in the end it turned out that it was MS itself who spread those 'illegal' copies. Another scheme to get the whole campain on the news without the extra commercial costs.
If this theory is correct, and please not that I'm not stating that it is, the remaining question would be "why /. ?". Well, it is a fact that a lot of technical skilled people hang out on Slashdot. This kind of information is only interessting for people who actually know a little bit more about stuff like this. But I'm quite positive that this thread gets far more attention now that /. had a little hassle with MS about this very same issue. At least among regular /. readers.
That's not true. I used to work with their products, and have earned MCSD/partly MCSE certification. In one of the exams (cannot remember which one) they asked which system was best for a particular task. The right answer was some Novell product.
Microsoft is a company like many others. They use whatever they can, and whatever they (think they) can get away with to make money. Contrary to the popular notion here, MS has some good products. The reason for that is that it's a way to make money.
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the pun is mightier than the sword
Microsoft was never really the dominant power that it has had the image of being. I think that the world and the company was under the illusion that they were, but you'll notice that NT has never been the true dominant enterprise server, that there really are more machines that at least look like unix than ones the run windows, and that standards really do reign. What M$ had power over was their users, which while that was the significant desktop market, that has never been where the REAL power in computing was. For M$ to ever be a real dominant company in the computer science realm, you would have to see supercomputers and mainframes that run windows, and you don't, because it's not a suitable market for them. Microsoft has always had to at least meet the standards part way, otherwise nothing would ever have worked under windows. The real problem is where they "embrace and extend" things into the proprietary realm, which has been destroying good standards for some time now. I think that they are learning the lesson that you don't take, for instance, Java, and make it only work under windows. We may start looking at an era where M$ is a real rival and not just a company that holds a bigger market share (no offense guys, it just pisses people off when you wreck our perfectly good software).
Eh...
Exactly. The date "Last updated on..." is not necessarily related to the date for "Made public on..."
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<sig>Guvf vf abg n frperg zrffntr
What ramifications does this new developement have for the Samba crew? Does this provide enough (legal) information for them to use?
I'm trying to think of a specific example... the best that I can come up with is Internet Explorer 3.0 for the MacOS. This was one of the best web browsers of all time, and it was specifically designed to work closely with the MacOS. And, for the record, it was released before the infamous alliance between MS and Apple. I suppose the project just kept a low profile at Microsoft, so the programmers were allowed to do it right.
MSK
You seem to be responding to this poor fellow as though he was Microsoft hatred incarnate, while that's really hard to judge without more information.
Still, you have an interesting point, and since I do have the basic opinion you cite above, I thought I'd give you the courtesy of a response.
The worst thing about Microsoft is simply that it builds its products on a house of cards foundation, which generally falls down on anyone trying to do serious work with the platform. Mix this with the virtual monopoly they have in many parts of the industry, and you have a killer brew which brings out the worst in programmers.
The general idea of having to use products we despise in order to eat is highly unsettling. I'd make a case for saying that millions of programmers are slowly killing themselves working with systems they despise. Until I became fortunate enough to get a Linux-based job, I was one of those people - so I know how it feels, and that I don't exaggerate.
Microsoft is the most vicious competitor in the industry. This is why, despite all they have to offer, they have made so few real friends. I wasn't as ferociously against them as I am now before their giant Internet push; I felt that "my internet" could survive on Unix servers and I wouldn't have to use crummy Microsoft technology. Well, I was wrong; Microsoft followed me to the net, and I will never forgive them for it.
The reason they have a near-monopoly in PC operating systems is that developers will generally write for the platform that has the most consumer/business mindshare. They got the mindshare by basically giving away the product with PCs running their previously dominant DOS. They acted brilliantly in exploiting their position. As a result, lots of people developed for them, and Microsoft Windows, despite its faults, became dominant.
It was proably inevitable that some company would thus gain a near-monopoly on operating systems. My beef is not with the monopoly; it's with the quality of the system and software provided with it.
So why don't I dislike Sun, SGI, Cisco or Oracle? Because they produce high quality products, for the most part, and I like using them.
I hate using Microsoft Windows, and yet there's a Microsoft Windows computer on my desktop. Granted, I have three others that I use 95% of the time, but the fact that even I have to use Windows for some things irks me.
I hope that answers your question.
D
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To my increasingly paranoid eye, this is yet another attempt to seize by misdirection and intimidation rights and protections not actually granted by law, and to deny by those same tactices the rights accorded to actual breathing citizens.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
The last release was copyrighted (because it was a published work) AND labelled a "trade secret". It was this second designation that allowed MS (or so they thought) to add "so don't use this to create your own implementation" to the license.
With only a copyright, this essentially becomes a "how to implement MS Kerb" book--you can use it to create an implementation but you can't copy the text. Just like any other book.
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Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
No, they just doctor video tapes for court evidence :)
Finkployd
The key here is that the license does not use a click thru to attempt to ban reverse engineering the protocol.
That is pretty important.
Wow, MS is recommending interoperability with Solaris using GCC! Personally, I never thought I'd live to see this.
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
Aside from legal issues, paranoid conspiracy theories, etc., has anyone considered that the guys at Micro$oft are jsut trying to do the right thing for once?
Sure people like Gates and Balmer are megalomanical incarnations of evil, but not everyone at Micro$oft is bad. Is it possible that somewhere in the chain of command there was a good guy that stepped back, took a long look, and realized that trying to add proprietary stuff to Kerberos was just a shitty thing to do?
When Micro$oft does things like this, try not to be such dicks about it. If people encourage them to keep open things open, and allow for interopability, and on top of that come up with some sort of positive response, maybe Micro$oft will start doing this sort of thing more often.
This is horribly funny. Anything a MS employee walks away with from a meeting between his two ears (in his natural memory) is considered the property of MS. And once it's theirs, as we see, they never, ever give it up.
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
I wasn't the only geek who grew up watching MacGuyver. Essentially, an hour long show(with a great theme song) of Ad Hoc Geekdom saving the world on a regular basis. Great TV; I'm sorry it's gone.
For all the fears about bombmaking information on the Internet, MacGyver in its time never needed to worry it was really teaching kids how to make any form of explosive--while most of the steps were technically accurate(usually), something was always left out so that kids wouln't blow off their fingers and sue the production company.
My question here is, has Microsoft left something out, something minor and non-obvious but critical to successful reimplementation? I'm not accusing them of doing this, but I am interested in what's been removed from the public documentation. Now, it's likely to be nothing--there's more likely more than a few very pissed off Kerberos developers within Microsoft, and I wouldn't be surprised in the least if them and a few "volunteer managers" were starting to get fed up with being used as pawns, particularly with the stock price falling so precipitously. The entire Kerberos debacle was a embarassment for everyone involved and I'm sure MS Upper Management figured that out reasonably quickly.
But still, the question remains: Has anything substantive been removed from these pubic documents?
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
J.K. Weston has been reassigned to an exciting new career as trainee in the phone tech support dept?
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
This is a valid argument, and I agree with you. I find it hard to temper my anger in the face of such egregious evil. At the same time, I know that the Microsoft people will point to me as some "foaming-at-the-mouth linux zealot." You know what? They're right. And it does hurt my position. But when I calm down and explain my position those Microsoft people get awfully quiet or get that deer-in-headlights look. Alas, I'm only human.
It's your declaration of it as "egregious evil" that indicates to people that you've got some kind of problem - you make it sound like Microsoft is the Third Reich. Which it's not - not by a loooooooooooong stretch. It's those kinds of statements that get people wondering.
Personally, I'd say lay off the caffeine and try to learn that life isn't binary; there are shades of gray. This way you'll find it much easier to deal with life in the real world.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Well, we all konstant is actually an employee of Microsoft, and he's submitted this story both here and at kuro5hin now. Haven't read the info at the website yet, but I'd be inclined to believe that this is some kind of MS set up, especially in light of their attack on /. last month...
Of course not.... MS would never do anything so wrong and immoral and not nice :) It's possible the page was just out there and not indexed/linked anywhere... IIRC, most of those timestamps are (theoretically) generated on-the-fly by the ASP engine based on the actual modification dates. Not really any way of checking that though. Unless someone wants to break into MS's web server(s) ;)
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Tim Wilde
Gimme 42 daemons!
but when I did a search on Microsoft.com during our little tussle with them last month, I didn't find it.
What ever happened with that tussle, anyhow? Did MS slink away when Andover's lawyers got tough or what?
-carl
. We've got computers, we're tapping phone lines, you know that ain't allowed - Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime"
Yeah, we used to put the wrong dates on our timecards just to avoid managerial and legal tussle too. It happens.
As for the spec. I think that Microsoft realizes that nobody will adopt their software if it doesn't work in the existing infastructure, and doesn't conform. I mean, I can call Java C++ all I want, but it doesn't mean that Java is C++, and programmers trying to use it to write C++ will go with a different compiler. Get it? Whether they found it morally right or wrong, they are beginning to see that they have to start playing nice, or die after they are split up.
Eh...
NOTICE SPECIFIC TO DOCUMENTS AVAILABLE ON THIS WEBSITE. Permission to use Documents (such as white papers, press releases, datasheets and FAQs) from this server ("Server") is granted, provided that (1) the below copyright notice appears in all copies and that both the copyright notice and this permission notice appear, (2) use of such Documents from this Server is for informational and non-commercial or personal use only and will not be copied or posted on any network computer or broadcast in any media, and (3) no modifications of any Documents are made. Educational institutions ( specifically K-12, universities and state community colleges) may download and reproduce the Documents for distribution in the classroom. Distribution outside the classroom requires express written permission. Use for any other purpose is expressly prohibited by law, and may result in severe civil and criminal penalties. Violators will be prosecuted to the maximum extent possible
Documents specified above do not include the design or layout of the Microsoft.com website or any other Microsoft owned, operated, licensed or controlled site. Elements of Microsoft websites are protected by trade dress, trademark, unfair competition, and other laws and may not be copied or imitated in whole or in part. No logo, graphic, sound or image from any Microsoft website may be copied or retransmitted unless expressly permitted by Microsoft.
Looks pretty much like the previous release, just without the trade secret nonsense.
So, does this mean we won? Is Slashdot still under threat of Microsoft lawyers, or has that all blown over? We want to know! :)
Syllable : It's an Operating System
I think it's about time MSFT does something like this. I work at a computer company, and we do a lot of software development. Currently, we are developing for Windows CE, and I have to say, I was really ticked when I learned I couldn't just d/l the SDK... I actually had to **order** it off of the developer store (Now true, it was free, but I still had to pay $7 s/h and wait 3 weeks to get the darned thing). Although this is a bit late in coming, it is a welcome addition. It will really help in programming for Windows 2000 sekurity. Better late than never!
Agelmar
This is barely related to the previous flap. In particular, there is nothing here which says what MS did with the PAC. Or in other words, how a non-Windows system can find out to what groups a particular user belongs. I don't see what all the hootin' and hollerin' is about.
As far as the date on the page is concerned, well they make heavy use of headers, footers & other automated elements on their site, so I don't think they are trying to claim its been there since Jan. 21st.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
You'll have to become Bill Gates's towel boy to use them!
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Err... if you actually take a look at the TechNet web page, you'll discover that there isn't nearly enough information to actually *implement* an interoperable implementation. There's a very high-level description of what goes into the Kerberos AUTH_DATA field, but not nearly enough bits-and-bytes information to actually implement anything interesting.
So when do you think MS will apologize for threatening a lawsuit?
There are two distinct possibilities. I will be generous and present them in order of highest benefit to M$:
My office has been taken over by iPod people.
This is not a criticism, it's just something to keep in mind when you read his take on things - just as it is when any employee of a company publicly comments on something directly involving that company's business).
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
After all the fuss last month over people posting Microsoft's copyrighted material to Slashdot, now someone's gone and done it again. Let's hope Microsoft see this as "Fair Use" before they unleash the lawyers again.
Microsoft has a habit of backdating alot of its technical articles. It is hard to tell if this is because the article existed internally for a while before it was released (most likely), whether it was a mistake, or whether they are trying to be sneaky. I have seen security problems reported to them that cause a technical article to appear publically with a date weeks in the past.
-weld
(Slashdot thinks I'm not logged in, though I was logged in a few minutes ago. Slashdot's been wierd today; a few minutes ago I was seeing lots of Perl error messages regarding "mu.current.nu", which supports Slashdot in some way.)
(OK, did a Preview, and now Slashdot has me logged in again. Somebody needs a new roll of duct tape.)
Your virulent-anti-Microsoft frame of mind coupled with the lack of *equally* strong foundations to back it up make me wonder about your mental health.
It can't be the closed source nature of Microsoft, because you don't display the same hatred towards other closed source companies or even shareware authors. It can't be the size of Microsoft, because again you aren't displaying the same level of antagonism towards Oracle, IBM or Cisco. And it can't be the monopoly position because I haven't heard your utterances about TW/AOL brainwashing or "One (insert telco here) Way"
"I don't know how I'd react if any of my friends went and worked there"
When you go off the deep end in your dislike of Redmond inhabitants you do more harm to your own position than to Microsoft's. In fact, I think Bill and Steve would have loved to have you on the witness stand before Judge Penfield.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
True, but how many research machines, supercomputers, massively distributed systems, that sort of thing run it? How many machines are designed to run it? More these days, but most of them were designed with a version of unix that comes along with it. Look at the riscstations, the sun systems, the new processors.
Eh...
The big furor was that this document previously was under a license that said that it was a trade secret, and which prohibited you from using the INFORMATION in it. This license doesn't do that, it merely prohibits you from re-distributing Microsoft's copyrighted document. No big deal, eh?
While I dislike Microsoft's business practices as much as the next guy (see my home page :-), let's not go overboard and read things into their actions that aren't there.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
The date, 21 Jan 2000, is probably accurate. A quick AltaVista search for that particular article title shows matches at the Microsoft TechNet site as early as 10 Feb. A more likely explanation is that M$'s search engine didn't get updated in a timely fashion. Or M$ paid off AltaVista to pre-date their index (which isn't very likely at all).
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"Go Metallica. Die RIAA." -- Linus Torvalds