Slashdot Mirror
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."
There seem to be a lot of rumours, but no real evidence that Microsoft will pursue this action. Getting control of TCP/IP as a protocol is a near-impossible challenge, even for Microsoft.
As another have pointed out, they could patent IP routing algoritms, but I think most of the apocalyptic vision predicted by this story is rather unlikely to ever happen.
At least, I hope so!
I wish people would stop jumping to conclusions! The author of the original document states that there is no mention of specific patent numbers so we don't know that Microsoft think they have any rights to the core TCP/IP, DNS or any other protocols.
As one of the first followups states, however:
"Keep in mind that even though the core protocols haven't changed that
much, actual TCP/IP deployments have drastically changed since the
early 80s. Efficient packet forwarding algorithms (which are
necessary in Gigabit networks and beyond) are certainly subject to
patents today."
There is nothing to stop Microsoft (or IBM or anyone else for that matter) developing such algorithms and patenting them. Before you all go off on your anti-Microsoft tirades, please make sure you have all the facts and not just conjecture!
If people would just stop talking about things they don't understand, things would get a lot more quiet. First of all almost everybody who use the term TCP/IP don't know what they are talking about. Because if they knew what they were talking about, they would use the right term, which is often one of the protocols IP, ICMP, UDP, or TCP.
Packet forwarding have nothing to do with TCP. It happens in the IP layer, the efficiency is obviously also to some extent affected by the lower layer protocols. But not the higher layers like TCP. But mostly efficiency of forwarding is an implementation issue, and not a property of the actual protocol.
To make things even worse a new term was invented to confuse people, and it is also called IP. Since this term covers a nonexisting concept it is in our best interrest not to use it. IP means Internet Protocol, any other use of that abreviation should be avoided. Unfortunately a lot people errornously use the term TCP/IP about the Internet Protocol.
Some confusion can be avoided by actually specifying the version number as well and say IPv4 or IPv6 rather than just IP. But for god's sake, make sure you use the right terms, or you will just cause even more confusion.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
I think the level of implied evilness in this matter is overplayed. Microsoft aren't denying that these standards are not exactly theirs exclusively to play around with.
Reading the FAQ, it looks more like some arcane clot of lawyers came up with this one to cover [Microsoft's|developers'] butts from ???. (can't figure out what the lawyers were trying to accomplish).
Specifically, this:
Q. I noticed a number of these protocols are available for license via other avenues - for instance, under license agreements promulgated by members of a standards setting body. If I already have rights to implement protocols (e.g., under other agreements), do I also have to sign a royalty-free license?
A. No, unless you wish to obtain rights available under the royalty-free license that are not available under other license agreements you may have.
There. They are acknowledging that you can use the protocols anyway without signing this license agreement.
Strange move, but not evil if I read things properly.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
IBM has been doing this for decades and they are exceptionally good at this. The difference is that, at least at this point in time, they do not actively do anything with their patents - at least not beyond the point of what's necessary to keep them. They just keep filing new patents to keep their asses covered. And, in a way, they have to do that to ensure the survival of the company. Think about it: it's way cheaper to just file for and receive a patent than to challenge somebody else's patent and to try and have that invalidated (something that hardly ever happens). It also helps with ligigation. If another company is suing you, you first check your database to see if they have violated one of your patents.
And to give you an idea of what I'm talking about, check out this quote from IBM's IP & Licensing website:
And, believe me, they're covering all their bases (last time, I checked they had 23k+ active patents and they have some exceptionally good lawyers). Please don't get me wrong. I'm not saying IBM is the bad guy here. I like the fact that they're supporting Linux as much as the next guy. I'm not even saying what they're doing is inherently evil. I'm merely trying to point out that patents are becoming a priority issue everywhere and that it's becoming increasingly important to CYA.
This is part of the DOJ settlement requiring Microsoft to license communications protocols essential for 3rd party software/operating systems to interoperate with Windows. No matter how stupid, trivial, or ancient, they're required to license them.
l =/library/en-us/randz/protocol/published_protocols _and_royalty-free_license_faq.asp):
And now they have.
From the FAQ (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?ur
Q. When I sign a royalty-free agreement for these protocols, what am I licensing?
A. The list of protocols under this license includes protocols for which documentation has been published, and that Microsoft has implemented in Windows client operating systems to interoperate with Windows server operating systems (up to and including Windows Server 2003). However, just because a protocol appears on the list does not mean that Microsoft is the owner or sole owner of rights in that protocol or its documentation. What the royalty-free license does is ensure that a license is available from Microsoft under whatever rights it may have in the published documentation and/or protocols on the list.
OK, this is mildly humurous and rather ominous at first appearances, but has the richest man in the US ceased listening to his corporate attorneys?
Bill seems to have forgotten about a "small thing" called DARPA and their creation, DARPAnet, which was the forerunner to the Internet.
Any judge who is worth half his paycheck will refuse to hear this case on the grounds of extreme frivolosity. (See mom, I made a new word!)
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
Not just FUD, but also lock-in. Please see the warning at the Samba Development page: In order to avoid any potential licensing issues we also ask that anyone who has signed the Microsoft CIFS Royalty Free Agreement not submit patches to Samba, nor base patches on the referenced specification.
Anyone who voluntarily licenses, for example, eating fish, must then abide by the fish-eating license (:-))
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
Second off, before everyone starts ripping on evil corporations and patents... let's not forget that the evil Government creates the environment that breeds bacterial scum like SCO.
In other words, engage in some activism. Help out the EFF, fight software patents in Europe, do whatever it takes to stop this problem at the source: Evil Government...
Rich.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
Please.
SMB is entirely different from the basic protocols of the internet. Samba was not in the best legal situation to begin with, before MSFT came out with this licencing scheme. You can hardly equate SMB with TCP/IP.
http://neokosmos.blogsome.com
The most recent IEEE Spectrum (Nov. 2004) has an article about their success in predicting technology over the past 40 years (it's their 40th anniversary issue).
The 1989 entry (pg. 79) is The Internet. The text:
At that time, 56K was sufficient for research; those home users who existed were getting by with 300 to 1440 Baud. (Even today, many users still survive on dial-up.) Of course, someone would have gotten the idea to fund a high speed network for commercial use. However, it almost certainly wouldn't look like the one that got funded for educational and research use, though. Necessarily so, it would have been immediately organized to generate an ROI for the investors who paid for it. Who knows? Maybe SPAM would have been called: COMMERCIAL CONTENT?
Gore's contribution wasn't technical, but if you've been paying attention you'll know that the technical problems are almost always the easiest to solve. The Internet as we know it today wouldn't exist without high bandwidth, inexpensive data pipes, and Mr. Gore generated the cash to have those built. I think he deserves a little credit for the significance of the contribution he made.
-- dave
davecb@spamcop.net
I'm not saying anybody should licence TCP/IP from MSFT. Far from it. MSFT clearly has no legitimate claims on ipv4, because the patents would have expired by now anyway, as TFA very clearly states. (Well, that, and MS Windows' ip stack was basically ripped out of BSD.)
If your lawyers have reviewed any possible claims MSFT has on a given protocol and determine that there are no valid ones, then there is no reason to licence it from MSFT at all. If MSFT does have a valid claim, then this licence is probably the best you're going to get out of them for free. If you want more, you'll have to licence it the normal way, which involves spending some dough.
http://neokosmos.blogsome.com
Pick any short acronoym and you'll find multiple meanings, like three common ones for IP. We all just have to make sure that we are not too lazy to put them in context or to spell each one out at least once in any sort of professional communication.
For those who want legal proof, it's right in the license itself:
"Implementation of these Protocols and, to the extent Microsoft is not the owner or sole owner of the Technical Documentation for these Protocols, use of this Technical Documentation may require securing additional rights from third parties. Licensee is responsible for contacting such third parties directly to discuss licensing details."
In other words, "We use these, but we don't own them. If you want to use our software to access these, here's the (extremely liberal and almost nonexistant) 'license'". Nothing to see here at all.
Good, you've RTFA. Now go all the way and RTFL (read the f*ing license). Apparently the guy in the eWeek story didn't.
"Implementation of these Protocols and, to the extent Microsoft is not the owner or sole owner of the Technical Documentation for these Protocols, use of this Technical Documentation may require securing additional rights from third parties. Licensee is responsible for contacting such third parties directly to discuss licensing details."
In other words, "We don't own any of this. We use it. If you use MS software to access these protocols, here's the (extremely liberal and almost nonexistant) 'license' to do so." Nothing to see here.
Go read TCP/IP Illustrated, volume I, by W. Richard Stenvens (one of the best technical book I know). The term "TCP/IP" is used to speak about all "the TCP/IP protocol suite", so it is about IP, TCP, UDP, ICMP, bgp4, ospf, etc.
From the Microsoft License Agreement:
2. Enhancements and Updates
Other than any updates that Microsoft may publish at the URL location(s) for the Protocol(s) listed in Exhibit A, no other Microsoft enhancements or updates to Protocols and/or Technical Documentation are licensed under this Agreement. In the event Microsoft elects to make other such Microsoft enhancements or updates available, such enhancements or updates will only be licensed by Microsoft under a separate written agreement.
3. Licenses
3.1 Copyright License. To the extent Microsoft has copyrights in the Technical Documentation for the Licensed Protocols , Microsoft hereby grants You a non-exclusive, royalty-free, non-sublicensable, personal, worldwide license to make a reasonable number of complete copies of that Technical Documentation solely for use in developing Licensed Implementation(s).
3.2 Patent License. To the extent Microsoft has Necessary Claims, Microsoft hereby grants You a nonexclusive, royalty-free, non-sublicenseable, personal, worldwide license under those Necessary Claims to use the Technical Documentation for the Licensed Protocols to:
So in English, Microsoft is not claiming ownership of anything. They are just saying that they may or may not own something but you can license it from them anyway.
Additionally, this license offers no indemnifaction. Even if you license the 130 protocols listed from Microsoft, if there is a legal challenge on a patent, Microsoft isn't going to protect you (according this this agreement).
My last point is this does not cover Microsoft extensions or as them call them "updates" to protocols. Does this mean you are licensing whatever is in the public RFC from Microsoft and their version of the technical documentation?
It's all so strange.
An interesting quote, but: http://www.snopes.com/quotes/lincoln.htm
MS had it first, and they probably caught it from Apple -- remember when Apple were threatening to sue people (including MS) they claimed had copied the interface Apple had nicked from Xerox?
Suckers may be born every minute, but the scams stay the same. Back when the first animal evolved a mechanism to mark out a territory it opened an ecological niche for a mimic to pretend to own territory it hadn't had to work to get and hold.
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
Actually they did. They did know all about it but internet was free, something MS cant stand. They set out to build their own net, MSN Network. Since microsoft cant invent itself out of a wet paperbag their MSN network failed miserably. The internet took over almost instantly and MS had to do a 90 degree turn, something that took a while to do.
In short, MS did know about the Internet but since they hate "not invented/stolen here" they tried to ignore it as long as possible.
HTTP/1.1 400
- To make things even worse a new term was invented to confuse people, and it is also called IP.
it was in reference to the term "Intellectual Property" which is supposed to be the body of law that covers copyright, trademark and patents. The spin of the term is intended to confuse people into thinking that property law, an entirely different set of rules, applies to those categories.It does not, and as long as we let the Intellectual Robber Barons define the debate by accepting the concept of ideas as "property" we concede to the assumption that since we're talking about "property" then it must be "ownable."
A better term, that more correctly defines the legal concept and better describes the issues is "intellectual rights." This restricts the debate to the limited rights that the law grants authors and inventors for a limited time and prevents the application of property law concepts like "ownership" and "theft" from being applied to things that they are simply not applicable to.
Um, read the article. And the license. All you did was read the Slashdot headline.
If you read the license, you would've seen this:
"Implementation of these Protocols and, to the extent Microsoft is not the owner or sole owner of the Technical Documentation for these Protocols, use of this Technical Documentation may require securing additional rights from third parties. Licensee is responsible for contacting such third parties directly to discuss licensing details."
In other words, "We don't own or have any legal rights over any of this stuff. We're, instead, pointing you to the public domain."
If anything, the license is a complete absolution of any legal rights, and is instead a classification method. MS management probably asked "where does public domain stuff fit into our licensing schemes" (since everything at MS is licensed). The lawyers turned around and said "Nowhere." "Well, write a 'license' anyway, even if it doesn't do anything." If it was ever brought up and court, opponents could actually use the thing against MS and say "look, you absolved any possible legal ownership over these". If nothing else, this "license" is a good thing.
I'm quoting the Samba team's warning against contributing to Samba while having signed an agreement about the other protocols.
Huh? The only protocol mentioned in what you quoted was CIFS, which is MS's new name for the revised specification of SMB that supports the funky new features of Win2K et al, and which is implemented in samba. That wasn't about 'other' protocols, it's about SMB/CIFS and Microsoft's NDAs, purely and simply.
Oh? I suppose that's the reason the grandparent post is modded informative... Everybody knows mods don't mod people informative who actually RTFA. (Hint: mods aren't always on crack... they have to come down some time.)
I would have also seen how 3.1 and 3.2 of the licence begin with "To the extent Microsoft has " [patent|copyright] claims. I am beginning to think you didn't even read my post, much less the licence. I would say you must be new here, but that seems kind of typical in MSFT vs FOSS type topics.
The language of the licence tries its best to retain all rights MSFT currently may have to the protocols in question. Whether it is a valid licence or not is a question for an IP lawyer, which I am not.
Also, I never said these licences were a bad thing in a case where MSFT does have actual valid claims. Something like this would be the only way you're ever going to licence a proprietary protocol like SMB from MSFT. One can certainly question whether it's a good thing that MSFT can even licence protocols in this manner at all, but that is dealing with the broader issue of whether software patents are a good thing, and does not pertain at all to TFA.
http://neokosmos.blogsome.com
I realize it's early Sunday morning, so the likelihood of a slight misquote is running a bit high, but this one's a whopper! Copied and pasted (damn, am I infringing some IP doing that?) from the Microsoft page: "If You want a license from Microsoft to implement one or more Protocol(s)..."
For a group of people who claim to be intelligent, a lot of moderators aren't very particular about what they think is insightful.
curiouser and
the interface Apple had nicked from Xerox
Apple gave Xerox a large amount of stock in exchange for those tours of PARC and many of the early Apple employees came from Xerox.
As for MS, there was a MS employee on the Office team (when it was a Mac only product) who called and asked in depth implementation questions about the Mac GUI that were irrelevant to developing Office. After stealing many of the ideas, they used the wording of a contract with Apple to make a claim (which held up in court) that they had licensed the "look and feel".
Funny, I always heard the original TCP/IP stack thingy was lifted directly from BSD which explained why the famous fragmented packet bug affected both BSD as well as Win98... waaaay back in the day. Those were fun times too -- I could nuke just about anyone at that time. :) I was so evil it was fun. I've outgrown it but it still makes me smile to recall the giddiness I had in those days.
Sorry for replying twice, but I just checked. The licence in question does indeed prohibit many uses, and it does specifically prohibit GPL use.
I don't know what - if anything - this licence actually covers, but to the extent that it covers ANYTHING it is extremely bad.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
There's no "signup"
If You want a license from Microsoft to implement one or more Protocol(s) [] sign and return this Agreement AS IS to Microsoft at the address shown
You must SIGN it and submit it.
no "legal binding"
This is a legal agreement ("Agreement") between the individual or entity identified and signing below ("You" or "Licensee"), and Microsoft Corporation
Legal agreements are binding.
the public domain stuff
the lawyers looked, saw that they didn't own any of it
Licensee desires a license from Microsoft, under any applicable intellectual property rights that Microsoft may have
NOT public domain stuff, it is a blanket reference to whatever relevant but unspecified stuff Microsoft owns.
If you read through the license, it basically exercises no legal rights at all.
It prohibits ALL SORTS of uses. One of many such restrictions, a restriction which happens to prohibit any GPL use is:
Patent License. To the extent Microsoft has Necessary Claims, Microsoft hereby grants You a nonexclusive, royalty-free, non-sublicenseable, personal, worldwide license
Non-sublicenseable directly prohibits any GPL software.
MS is basically backing off with it's hands in the air
With a gun in each hand, all set to exterminate GPL and other software. To the extent that Microsoft has patent claims on anything signifigant they can ban GPL and other open source software from the internet.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
So they must have posted this really early. How long until April 1st?
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
Samba implements a protocol which was analyzed "off the wire", and so is not legally encumbered by a license. They wish to stay that way.
Which protocol? Every protocol.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
Microsoft did copy the interface from Apple. It was a pretty blatant ripoff. Even the internal API was a direct ripoff, even down to the identical function names and the peculiar use of handles.
Go read Folklore.org. In particular, read this story about Microsoft employee Neil Konzen. Basically he was working on Microsoft Office for the Mac and he (ab)used his close relationship with Apple to leak implementation details to the Microsoft Windows team.
... Apple licensed from Xerox.