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

Closer look

[MadFarmAnimalz]

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.

Re:FUD

[davecb]

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

Re:Al Gore

[itsNothing]

The record shows that Mr. Gore did a lot more for your internet connection than you're giving him credit for. Mr. Gore didn't invent networks or protocols or browsers. He gave you commercial-free bandwidth.

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:

Sometimes all you have to do is unlock the barn door--the hourse will amble out, and the cart will follow. When it came to the horse that would turn into the Internet, Bob Lucky wasn't worried about where it would go--he just wanted to be sure he was along for the ride.

In September 1989, two years before any commercial activity on the Internet and four years before the graphical Web, the plucky Lucky, then a Bell Labs research director and still Spectrum's in-house sage, wrote: "A bill bending before the United States Congress, sponsored by Senator Albert Gore Jr. (D-Tenn), would authorize the construction of a nationwide gigabit network to connect educational and research institutes. The issue that keeps being raised is: what would a user do with a gigabit data link?"

Lucky's answer was simple. "We are not very good at prediciting uses until the actual service becomes available. I am not worried; we will think of something when it happens."

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.

TCP/IP Term

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:FUD

[SilentChris]

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.