Microsoft Offers to License the Internet

NW writes "According to an eWeek story Microsoft is beginning to assert IP rights over 130 protocols including many basic Internet protocols including TCP/IP, DNS, etc. The story originates with a mailing list post to the IETF's IPR list."

Comments

Re:Like most other IP battles...

[datGSguy]

I for one welcome our new.... er... fuck no!

No problem, use TTCPS!

[jocks]

Being the canny Scot that I am, I have used my inate ingenuity and now all my computers at home are linked together using TTCPS. Yes Two Tin Cans and a Piece of String networking is the way forward.

I have already spoken to Linus T. who will be imlementing TTCPS in kernel 2.8, but I have released some modules which can be compiled into kernels 2.4 and 2.6 right now. Those of us on BSD can try the Two Steel Cans and a Piece of Cord (TSCPC) protocol but I'm not sure about compatability.

I've also received a letter from SCO's lawyers claiming that the string I used was from their own private ball and I should cease and desist. To counter this I am using twine spun by my own mother from the wool of our own sheep. I still maintain that the string I was using was just like any other piece of string and as SCO has been unable to specify what length they have missing I am not too worried.

Some geeks over at www.ttcpsgeek.org have been experimenting with High-Tensile string and have achieved remarkable increases in bandwidth - expect this to be ported back into TTCPSv2, due for release at the end of February.

Re:MS & TCP/IP

[ettlz]

I think the acronyms have been mixed up here. Perhaps Microsoft is referring to the following, lesser-known usages:

• TCP/IP Take Court Proceedings over Intellectual Property;
• DNS Darl's Not Sinister;
• DHCP Devise Hazardous Corporate Patents;
• LPD Lawyers Paid Double; and, finally
• RIP Our IP

That said, I've never found any alternate uses for NetBIOS over TCP/IP. Or UPnP.

Re:Before the M$ Bashing Begins

[pchan-]

As might efficient packet discarding algorithms, as per their listing the Discard Protocol as one of the protocols you can license from them.

you're saying there's no innovation to be had in the discard protocol? the lazy unix programmer would just take his echo protocol implementation and redirect output to /dev/null. of course, after a bit of optimizing (and probably an assembly implementation), he would discover that he could just throw away that buffer and be done with it. now, you're thinking, "sure, that's obvious."

microsoft doesn't do things like that. they planned ahead. what if you want to tunnel discard over an ipsec tunnel of ipv6? what if you wanted to implement discard via remote method invocation using xml with soap? what if you wanted every application you write to have access to the discard protocol as simply as instantiating an object?

that's why they created the microsoft abstract discard server (ms discard). the ms discard library provides you with an abstract implementation of a general discard server, as well as a fully functional discard client. the discard server is fully input-neutral, and can accept data from many common stream formats. have you ever wanted to run a discard server against a relational database query? probably not. but now you can! this is done easily by using the odbc discard data source bridge (or if you need speed over portability, oci). virtually any data source can be discarded in a clean, multithreaded, scalable fashion. discard is now available enterprise-wide over ldap. do your discard servers need load balancing and failover redundancy? with ms discard, you can take advantage of advanced clustering features and achieve five 9's of uptime from your discard server farm (*requires ms discard clustering server and windows 2003 advanced server pro champion edition).

in short, don't assume that just because the protocol in basic, the implementation can't be bloated and patented.

Re:Before the M$ Bashing Begins

[Trogre]

Congratulations on your recent completion the first semester of the Cisco CCNA course!

I hope you feel better now that you've clarified your opinion of the terms TCP, IP and TCP/IP to the rest of us. Boy do we feel stupid.

Good luck with semester 2.