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80% of MS Server Protocols Are Unpatented
perlow writes "ZDNet blogger Jason Perlow and Centrify's Tom Kemp discover that 80 percent of all Microsoft server protocols are un-patented. What exactly then, did SAMBA license? Are Microsoft's patent and intellectual property threats simply the growls of a paper tiger?"
...is what they licensed
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
Why should a server protocol be patented? A patent should be for something you don't want copied. If I were selling servers I'd want to interoperate with clients and other servers.
Oh, Microsoft. Never mind, my bad.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
99% could be unpatented, it only takes one patent to ruin you.
is competition good, or is duplication of effort bad?
ZDNet blogger Jason Perlow and Centrify's Tom Kemp discover that 80 percent of all Microsoft server protocols are un-patented. What exactly then, did SAMBA license?
Is this article trying to present me with the logic: 80% of protocols are un-patented, therefore SMB is un-patented?
Because I don't see how that follows at all. Is SMB part of the 80% or part of the 20%? If you want to know what SAMBA licensed, why don't you just ask them? I'm sure they'd know...
Comment of the year
If you read the linked articles (which I know you didn't), you will see that SAMBA wanted rights to ALL of the technologies, so they had to pay for patent licensing on that elusive 20%.
I know I'm going to get modded Troll for this, but does every article about patent licensing and Microsoft have to be so skewed anti-MS?
It's a little like licensing a sewer system in which nothing is patented except the toilets. That last 20% makes all the difference in the world.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
These days with the patent office handing out patents like candy, you don't even have to do that. For instance, in the firehose there's been this story for a while http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=631632 "Flip Video Camera Maker Sued For Patent Infringeme" Regarding this patent: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5781788.PN.&OS=PN/5781788&RS=PN/5781788
So without further ado, Claim #1 of the patent:So. Based on that, how does one compress video using a single chip (the patent has absolutely NOTHING about its implementation)? Being able to show that might make it actually look like the company actually invented something, instead, rendered to its most basic element, the patent says "anything that does stuff using only one chip plus DRAM" which is something an 8 year old could come up with, without even knowing what DRAM means.
The patent office has long since slid past allowing "crap" to churning out patents of "pure unadulterated bullshit".
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Anything that threatens their desktop or server OS market is a target of the most obscene threats, even those that could result in criminal prosecution if they were ever discovered to be done with malice in order to protect their monopoly.
Threats are Microsoft's business of the day. That's their plan for the future to thwart off all competition to their desktop OS. No matter that they begged, borrowed, and stole 90% of the ideas that went into it. If you can't compete any longer you litigate, or threaten to in order to have customers potentially switching to the competition stop in their tracks.
Those in their right mind knew this was just blather from the Ballmer, but it is enough to get companies re-examining their plans.
You can't trust Microsoft and you can't trust that they won't try to patent what they have failed to patent so far. Nor can you keep them from changing things once you have developed around them. You all saw the sheer bullshit with the ISO so you must understand that they are far more devious than this in other areas. We as the watchful eye haven't had a chance yet to gaze into their other practices, the real practices that keep people locked into their technologies.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
The 'Protocols' have ALWAYS been fairly open for MS Server products.
The part that SAMBA is licensing and NEEDS to license is when they are implementing features normally found in Windows Server that are not open.
Off top of my head I would guess these would be:
ACL & Security
Group Policy Features
Domain Features
Roaming Profiles, etc.
FS Search Network Queries ala Vista/Windows Desktop Search
etc etc etc...
The freaking communications and protocols are never been a big MS secret, as they are just evolutionary methods, it is the guts that SAMBA also tries to provide that has always been 'reverse engineered' and is now 'licensed' instead.
Geesh...
I always thought the classic reason why a company wouldn't patent a proven technology is to avoid documenting it. To file for the patent you would need to document critical detail and behavior which could be something the competition could read up on and build new products on the idea. Or in other words, if they never file for the patent they never have to claim it exists. Keeping it off the books keeps it obscure and keeps it theirs.
The "protocol" used with the flat-head screw driver is a slit. There are two parts - the screwdriver (which can be patented) and the screw (which can be patented). The slit (protocol)?
As you pointed out, a coin can be used instead of the screwdriver. And the receptor may be something other than a screw (say, a snap-tab).
Is the slit itself patentable?
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
Perhaps if you wanted to implement a system where nonsubscribers had limits to the volume or frequency of their flushes?
Stasis is death. Embrace change.