Slashdot Mirror
Web Services Patented by IBM and Microsoft
daecabhir writes "This article from ZDNet is an interesting read. Not just because of the implications of what IBM and Microsoft appear to be doing, but because it again brings to light how susceptible many standards processes continue to be to commercial interests. You would think that being early adopters, crafting the standards so that they can have the first and most compliant implementations might be enough - but I guess these companies aren't secure about the quality of their products, so they have to go down the route of intellectual property ownership, enforcement and RAND (reasonable and non-discriminatory, whatever "reasonable" means) licensing fees."
Wouldn't it be fairly easy to demonstrate in court that people were implementing web services long before IBM or Microsoft patented it?
I think we need to think like IBM or Microsoft for a second. If I were an excutive at one of these companies I would patent technology I spent a millions to develop to make money to cover the cost of developing it. That is what a patent is for. Besides given IBMs track record lately they could use there patents to screw Microsoft. For instance they could say that anything that is open source doesn't have to pay a royalty and anything close source does.
In fact IBM having patents for web services insures competition. Microsoft can't afford to do anything stupid with the lisence (think samba xp thing) now that they don't have pieces to the puzzle patented, and they need web services in the future to servive.
regrouping and clamping down.
M$ is well known in its rapacity and IBM was deservedly the subject of the longest antitrust suit of the last century/millenium. Both have been money mills for lawyers on both sides of the issue.
All traffic will have to go through their gates (no pun intended,) and they will collect a tithe on every packet.
Look for rapid adoption of IPv6 after that since they will need to identify the source, route and destination of every packet in order to charge you for every hop.
Shades of Canada's x.25 packet network which use to cost me plenty every month.
The costs will realign themselves to make it impossible to for individuals to contemplate downloading squat since the cost of transmission will equal or exceed the cost purchase of a hard good.
Only businesses will be able to use the net and the size of those businesses will scale with the cost per packet. Eventually, only the rich and large corporations will be on the net and by then it won't be worth using.
If there is anything that the last series of wars has shown its that armies and money aren't power, control of communications is power.
And the powerful don't share with the powerless (that means YOU) regardless of the potential benefits for anyone involved.
Instead they hoard communications, distort and prevaricate and depending on the armaments available send out the bombers, the local equivalent of the "Ton Ton Macoute" or their own children, the ones who who haven't yet starved to death, out amongst the crowd wearing bombs strapped to their chests.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
... that's how the Internet came to flourish, and that's the only way future network technologies will ever have a chance. Anything else is quite simply doomed.
The existence of open standards such as TCP/IP, HTTP and all the rest, which were agreed upon by the major players, created markets in which everyone had their chance to create the best products. We've seen in recent years how hard it is to make money in the Internet, since users are accustomed to getting everything for free. If it had cost money just to use the thing in the first place, it never would have gotten off the ground.
If standards for web services are not royalty-free, then there will be no such thing within a few years. Or perhaps the idea of web services will survive on the basis of other, royalty-free protocols, but SOAP and WDSL and other patented technologies will be a footnote in history. Let IBM and M$ go ahead if they want to kill off their own inventions, it really doesn't bother me a bit.
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
Only businesses will be able to use the net and the size of those businesses will scale with the cost per packet. Eventually, only the rich and large corporations will be on the net and by then it won't be worth using.
I very much doubt the net will die like this. Why would MS throw away a limitless revenue stream to move into a specialist market? Never mind the fact that it's opposed to their vision of "any time, any place and on any device," a business model that involved pushing people off the net would diminish the value of the service over time! More likely, I'd have thought, they'd make the cost of data transfer low enough that people couldn't be bothered to complain or work around it, and clean up on the quiet as the net continues to grow. Charge a penny per gigabyte, and watch the pile of pennies grow exponentially...
"Against the backdrop of the W3C's emerging plan to adopt a primarily royalty-free-based patent policy, the royalty-free vs. RAND controversy reached full boil last October when Hewlett-Packard withdrew its support as a sponsor of IBM and Microsoft's W3C WSDL submission on the basis that WSDL might not be royalty-free"
It seems to me that HP supports open standards more than IBM does. And besides, IBM has historically been just as monopolistic as MS ever was. Also, HP & Compaq seem so support Linux as much as IBM does. I'm sure there is a good reason why people here admire IBM but think HPaq is doomed. I'd love to have someone explain it to me.
Actually, I think X.25 had a very valid point. Looking at Microsoft's sales figures for Office XP and Windows XP, and the enthusiastic switch to use Visual Studio.NET and write Web Services instead of using good ol' MFC (no, wait, I don't know anyone who's done that) I think it's clear that the whole universe will not suddenly leap up and jump just because MS says so.
The business world seems to have decided enough is enough with the latest round of MS software. Where were all the pre-ordered WinXP installations this time? Where are the corporate-wide drives to upgrade to Office XP? Why is everyone so sceptical about the whole product activation issue? They've woken up, that's why. MS have lost the momentum they used to carry their last major releases (Win2K and O2K) and they know this.
I don't think home users are buying it, either. I know quite a few tech savvy people who have bought new boxes since WinXP came out, and quite a few more who aren't so tech savvy. An awful lot of both have been asking obvious but difficult questions about WinXP, the popular practice among retailers of supplying a "recovery CD" rather than a genuine Windows CD, whether they can have Win2K instead, etc. I'm sure the overall impact of that hasn't been lost on MS either.
MS may be the masters of marketing hype and spin, but sooner or later, the paying public stops buying it. MS lawyers can win all the court cases they like, but the bad press is still bad press, and it has, and will continue to, hurt them. People are becoming aware of the way MS behaves, and unless they can do something about it (which obviously they're trying, but their success is far from guaranteed) their ability to force through new standards is far from guaranteed, either.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Could someone post a list of the patents IBM and Microsoft hold in regard to Web Services? I think it's time to find out what those patents are and start a new trully open and royalty-free standards race. Off the top of my head I can imagine (and bring to fruition within 6 months) several alternate ways to do what Web Services try to do today, and this time do it right (come on, WSDL is COMPLEX, and where are the standard security messures?). So, post here links to those patents, and let's teach the big guys a lesson.
Microsoft is at it again, this time big-blue is right along with them. IBM and Microsoft are trying to erect so-called standard-bodies that would allow them to get-around the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) requirements for standards to be royalty-free.
Read this article over at ZDNet to get an overview of what is going on.
While they did release the core SOAP and UDDI specifications to the royalty-free process, they are trying to create "piggy-back" protocls that will ensue royalties (i.e. security signing of SOAP messages, file attachments on soap messages and security policy negotiations). They are trying to establish these standards through the UDDI and WS-I organizations. These organizations are perceived to be open and acceptable standard bodies, but they are not. They are heavily controlled by both juggernauts and conform to their interests.
The W3C and the IETF are the only true standard bodies of the Internet! Do not be fooled by IBM and Microsoft and do not be sucked into their grip!
They are trying to ensure that Open-Source, Free implementations of these standards will not be possible! They will be trying to become "toll-boothes" on the Internet.