What should be the outcome of Microsoft antitrust suit.
Zalek...@hotmail.com
without any operating system installed.
This will give a customer choice of any OS, or if someone aleady have
Win on desktop, why he/she have to pay to M$ an additional fee for OS
on laptop?
Zalek
Mark S. Bilk
In article <38df501d...@news.bellatlantic.net>,
Matthias Warkus
...and Zalek...@hotmail.com <Zalek...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> There should be a law that a customer must have a right to buy any PC
> without any operating system installed.
> This will give a customer choice of any OS, or if someone aleady have
> Win on desktop, why he/she have to pay to M$ an additional fee for OS
> on laptop?
Your question is off-topic for this group.
mawa
--
Q: How do you get holy water?
A: Boil the hell out of it.
Erik Funkenbusch
500 company). He's made the vast majority of his money from stock, not from
people that purchased Microsoft software.
Mark S. Bilk <m...@netcom.com> wrote in message
news:8bibhv$a2p$1...@nntp6.atl.mindspring.net...
> Bill Gates should have to give back all the money.
>
> In article <38df501d...@news.bellatlantic.net>,
> Zalek...@hotmail.com <Zalek...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >There should be a law that a customer must have a right to buy any PC
> >without any operating system installed.
> >This will give a customer choice of any OS, or if someone aleady have
> >Win on desktop, why he/she have to pay to M$ an additional fee for OS
> >on laptop?
> >
> >Zalek
>
>
David Goldstein
>
> There should be a law that a customer must have a right to buy any PC
> without any operating system installed.
> This will give a customer choice of any OS, or if someone aleady have
> Win on desktop, why he/she have to pay to M$ an additional fee for OS
> on laptop?
We just had a discussion about this at work yesterday. My opinion was
pretty much the same as yours--do not allow companies to sell computers
with OS's preinstalled. This could actually benefit MS and the consumer
at the same time. Since MS would have to become competitive, they would
probably start giving away Office with the purchase of any Win OS--a
plus for consumers that have to pay a lot of money for that product.
Since they would be giving away the Office software, they would be able
to lock even more people in to their OS ;-0
> Zalek
David Goldstein
Erna Odelfsan
> without any operating system installed.
> This will give a customer choice of any OS, or if someone aleady have
> Win on desktop, why he/she have to pay to M$ an additional fee for OS
> on laptop?
I do not believe laws are the solution to that. Would you like a law
saying that
let's say TV's could not include a let's say components from the company
GTEGRY ?
And I am not advocating Windows in here, just think a law is something very
complex to apply, the market decides, if you want the computers from shop A
with
no OS installed and this shop sells far less than shop B, with the HYHYH OS
preinstalled, be sure that shop B will stop doing it.
2:1
> There should be a law that a customer must have a right to buy any PC
> without any operating system installed.
> This will give a customer choice of any OS, or if someone aleady have
> Win on desktop, why he/she have to pay to M$ an additional fee for OS
> on laptop?
I don't thaink that should be a law. Most people wouldn't want / be able
to install an OS themselves (lusers, mainly, but there are a lot of
them). But any decent vendor would sell you a computer without an OS
installed, so go and buy from one of them.
-Ed
>
> Zalek
--
Did you know that the oldest known rock is the famous Hackenthorpe rock,
which
is over three trillion years old?
-The Hackenthorpe Book of Lies
Roy.C...@switzerland.org
2:1 <u98...@eng.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> "Zalek...@hotmail.com" wrote:
>
>> There should be a law that a customer must have a right to buy any PC
>> without any operating system installed.
>> This will give a customer choice of any OS, or if someone aleady have
>> Win on desktop, why he/she have to pay to M$ an additional fee for OS
>> on laptop?
>
> I don't thaink that should be a law. Most people wouldn't want / be able
> to install an OS themselves (lusers, mainly, but there are a lot of
> them). But any decent vendor would sell you a computer without an OS
> installed, so go and buy from one of them.
OEM's should show the price of a PC without the cost of any bundled s/w
(including the OS). They should state the cost of installing any s/w on
the PC and should be free to configure that s/w any way they wish. That
way people can choose what they want installed.
ccghst
David Goldstein wrote in message <38DC7BA8...@regio-info.de>...
>"Zalek...@hotmail.com" wrote:
>>
>> There should be a law that a customer must have a right to buy any PC
>> without any operating system installed.
>> This will give a customer choice of any OS, or if someone aleady have
>> Win on desktop, why he/she have to pay to M$ an additional fee for OS
>> on laptop?
>
>pretty much the same as yours--do not allow companies to sell computers
>with OS's preinstalled.
As an option, the right to buy without an OS is probably
a good one. There is a major practical problem with
-forbidding- machine vendors from preinstalling. It
could be a tech-support nightmare.
One reason vendors who do allow you the flexibility of
choosing your OS still refuse to sell the systems without
an OS is that it makes phone support much more difficult.
It is extremely time consuming to determine, for example,
whether certain hardware isn't working because the
hardware is defective, or if the customer is in fact using
an unsupported version of their OS (didn't install the
patches, didn't compile the driver properly, etc.)
Plus a certain segment of the population is just too dim
to do an OS install, even with friendly menus, etc.
The politics would make that impossible.
Mark Robinson
ccghst wrote:
>
> David Goldstein wrote in message <38DC7BA8...@regio-info.de>...
> >"Zalek...@hotmail.com" wrote:
> >>
> >> There should be a law that a customer must have a right to buy any PC
> >> without any operating system installed.
> >> This will give a customer choice of any OS, or if someone aleady have
> >> Win on desktop, why he/she have to pay to M$ an additional fee for OS
> >> on laptop?
> >
> > We just had a discussion about this at work yesterday. My opinion was
> >pretty much the same as yours--do not allow companies to sell computers
> >with OS's preinstalled.
>
> As an option, the right to buy without an OS is probably
> a good one. There is a major practical problem with
> -forbidding- machine vendors from preinstalling. It
> could be a tech-support nightmare.
>
> One reason vendors who do allow you the flexibility of
> choosing your OS still refuse to sell the systems without
> an OS is that it makes phone support much more difficult.
> It is extremely time consuming to determine, for example,
> whether certain hardware isn't working because the
> hardware is defective, or if the customer is in fact using
> an unsupported version of their OS (didn't install the
> patches, didn't compile the driver properly, etc.)
Actually they could have several options
1) Windows. Add $0. With tech support
2) Free Unix. Subtract $60. With tech support
...
5) Nothing. Subtract $100. No tech support.
JEDIDIAH
>In article <38DE9046...@eng.ox.ac.uk>,
> 2:1 <u98...@eng.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> There should be a law that a customer must have a right to buy any PC
>>> without any operating system installed.
>>> This will give a customer choice of any OS, or if someone aleady have
>>> Win on desktop, why he/she have to pay to M$ an additional fee for OS
>>> on laptop?
>>
>> to install an OS themselves (lusers, mainly, but there are a lot of
>> them). But any decent vendor would sell you a computer without an OS
>> installed, so go and buy from one of them.
>
>OEM's should show the price of a PC without the cost of any bundled s/w
>(including the OS). They should state the cost of installing any s/w on
>the PC and should be free to configure that s/w any way they wish. That
>way people can choose what they want installed.
Essentially, price discrimination on the part of MS must end.
Microsoft should be barred from offering different wholesale
prices for different customers. Dell would get the same price
as compusa, no more no less. All manner of discounts should
also be prohibited including volume discounts.
Also, all contracts made by Microsoft should become public record.
A consumer or watchdog group should have the option to inspect
Microsoft's business dealings with end consumer merchants.
--
It is not the advocates of free love and software
that theare the communists, but rather those that |||
advocate or perpetuate the necessity of only using / | \
one option among many, like in some regime where
product choice is a thing only seen in museums.
Need sane PPP docs? Try penguin.lvcm.com.
Marada C. Shradrakaii
>saying that
>let's say TV's could not include a let's say components from the company
It's not quite the same. Saying "I can't throw in this RCA antenna" is
deliberately out to get one company. Saying "I can't include ANY antenna"
places all manufacturers on level ground.
--
Marada Coeurfuege Shra'drakaii
members.xoom.com/marada Colony name not needed in address.
DC2.Dw Gm L280c W+ T90k Sks,wl Cma-,wbk Bsu#/fl A+++ Fr++ Nu M/ O H++ $+ Fo++
R++ Ac+ J-- S-- U? I++ V+ Q++[thoughtspeech] Tc++
Steve Fosdick
> choosing your OS still refuse to sell the systems without
> an OS is that it makes phone support much more difficult.
One of the mail order houses here in the UK sells many of it's PCs in
two versions, one with Windows pre-installed and one at about £65
cheaper without.
Still, just because one supplier is doing it doesn't mean that others
will and I fully support product unbundling - it is worth legislating to
say that if someone is prepares to sell you a PC with windows
pre-installed for one price they MUST offer to sell you one without for
the same price minus the cost of a windows license.
But, to be consistant we shouldn't stop at computers for this. If
someone sells product X and product Y which are normally sold in
combination then they should be required to sell each separately at a
maxium price of the cost of the combination minus their normal retail
price for the other.
Steve Fosdick
>
> "Zalek...@hotmail.com" wrote:
> I don't thaink that should be a law. Most people wouldn't want / be able
> to install an OS themselves (lusers, mainly, but there are a lot of
> them). But any decent vendor would sell you a computer without an OS
> installed, so go and buy from one of them.
Someome earlier made the sugestion that PC sellers be forbidden to sell
a PC with an OS pre-installed. For the reasons you specify I think that
is poor idea, but what was advocated in the post you replied to was that
people should have the right to choose - to not pay for what they don't
want and I would agree with that.
This issue has, to my mind, a much wider application that computers and
the OSs. What I would like to see is restriction on product bundling
that means that whenever someone assembles a bundled product from two or
more other products they must be prepared to sell the components
separately and the cost of the package must be no less than the sum of
the cost of the component parts.
R.E.Ballard
Zalek...@hotmail.com (Zalek...@hotmail.com) wrote:
> There should be a law that a customer must have a right to buy any PC
> without any operating system installed.
Bad idea. Most customers don't have the technical expertise to install
off-the-shelf versions of any operating system, including windows,
without the special OEM files provided by the manufacturer.
> This will give a customer choice of any OS, or if someone aleady have
> Win on desktop, why he/she have to pay to M$ an additional fee for OS
> on laptop?
Microsoft has the right to charge for each machine on which Windows is
installed. If you installed Windows 2000 on 2 machines, one of which
never had any version of Windows because you bought "bare-bones", and
you only paid for the upgrade, then you would own Microsoft the
appropriate price for the second system.
On the other hand, you shouldn't be forced to pay for an operating
system that you don't want. Ultimately, you should be able to choose
any combination of operating systems - paying extra for each
preinstalled system.
So getting to the bottom line: What should be included in the
settlement.
Business Practices:
Pricing schedule:
Microsoft should be allowed a spead of 20% on no more than 50%
of the previous year's sales. If the manufacturer orders more
than 50% of the previous year's sales, they will get no further
discount. The Federal Trade Commission would be given the right
to monitor all contracts to make sure than the spread does not
exceed 20%.
Tie-ins:
Microsoft will not be able to offer discounts in exchange for
non-monetary compensation such as the inclusion or exclusion of
competitor productes. Each component much be independently
managed and marketed.
Innovations:
Microsoft may not provide any incentives for the inclusion of
products for which there are other competitors. For example,
Microsoft may offer Internet Explorer as a complimentary product,
but may not make the inclusion of it, or it's placement on the
desktop a requirement for aquiring the operating system.
Exclusions:
Microsoft may not contracturally exclude any competitior from
the marketplace. This includes any contract condition or behavior
that effectively excludes any other operating system, application,
or application programmer interface. Thus Microsoft cannot
restrict modifications to the boot sequence or disk partitioning
that would effectively exclude Linux or any other competitor.
Predatory coding:
Microsoft may not create code that would damage any existing
subsystem whether provided by Microsoft or any competitor. This
includes any modifications of the Master Boot Record, the
partitioning, or the release of upgrades that damage competitor
products. When there are disputes over predatory code, Microsoft
will submit the code in question. The arbiter could be the FTC.
The Findings of Fact Stand:
All portions of Judge Jackson's findings of fact are accepted
by Microsoft. Microsoft will be given amnesty for previous
conduct, but will be treated as a monopoly, and all testimony
and findings can be used in the event of future misconduct.
Nondisclosure Agreements:
When a competitive standard is provided in a publicly available
formate, Microsoft may not use nondisclosure agreements or
incentivess for creating alternative proprietary standards.
All future communications protocols will be regulated by the
Federal Communications Commission. The use of proprietary
hardware interfaces will be regulated by the Federal Trade
Commission. This will only apply to protocols and standards
that are not available under the same terms as competitive
standards, and will only apply to standards bodies in which
Microsoft is a contributing member. Microsoft may not use
nondisclosure agreements to prevent the disclosure of
information that could otherwise be copyrighted or patented.
Deceptive Marketing:
Microsoft will not be allowed to use nondisclosure agreements
to suppress reports which are accurate but unfavorable to
Microsoft. This includes, but is not limited to, benchmark
results, bug reports, feature comparisons, or comparisons to
competing technology.
Conditions for lifting the restrictions:
The restrictions listed above would be lifted once competitors
have penetrated at least 50% of the market. This includes both
coexistant (dual-boot) systems and competitor only systems.
This 50% will only include those platforms on which Microsoft
Operating Systems are licenced and the regulations would be
lifted on a market-segment by market-segment basis. Thus,
if Microsoft controls less than 50% of the hand-held market,
there would be no restrictions on that market, but the existing
restrictions would still exist in the Intel PC market.
The 50% rule also applies to all competitive products installed
on an after-market basis.
Penalties and Enforcement:
If Microsoft violates the initial court decree, they would
be in contempt of court. Furthermore, executives ordering
actions which violate this agreement could be jailed for
contempt, fined based on a percentage of personal assets, or
prosecuted under criminal racketeering laws.
Microsoft would be fully liable for all damages to competitors
and for damages to the consumer market as a whole for any
violations. These would be subject to binding arbitration by
an appellate court and could only be appealed to the supreme
court.
> Zalek
>
--
Rex Ballard - Open Source Advocate, Internet
I/T Architect, MIS Director
http://www.open4success.com
Linux - 60 million satisfied users worldwide
and growing at over 1%/week!
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
dark...@x-mail.net
Explorer. Everyone should have the option to delete the browser (which
you can't do with IE).
No company or individual should be forced to use an operating system
they don't want to. There are too few types of computers readily
avaiable that you can choose the OS that comes with it or no OS at all.
Many people buy from chain stores and they come with Win98; and they
would not think of putting Linux on there for you.
For an open market companies and people need to be given a choice.
For all the criminal activities, Microsoft should pay a heavy fine.
Erik Funkenbusch
news:8bqurt$hal$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> Bad idea. Most customers don't have the technical expertise to install
> off-the-shelf versions of any operating system, including windows,
> without the special OEM files provided by the manufacturer.
I'm glad you recognize this, since it conflicts with parts of your later
statements.
> So getting to the bottom line: What should be included in the
> settlement.
>
> Business Practices:
>
> Pricing schedule:
> Microsoft should be allowed a spead of 20% on no more than 50%
> of the previous year's sales. If the manufacturer orders more
> than 50% of the previous year's sales, they will get no further
> discount. The Federal Trade Commission would be given the right
> to monitor all contracts to make sure than the spread does not
> exceed 20%.
So now you are penalizing an OEM for increasing their sales by more than
50%.
If I buy 1 copy last year, and this year I want 100, I have to pay full
price for 98 of them?
> Tie-ins:
> Microsoft will not be able to offer discounts in exchange for
> non-monetary compensation such as the inclusion or exclusion of
> competitor productes. Each component much be independently
> managed and marketed.
So, Microsoft could not offer discounts to OEM's that, say, follow the
latest PCxx standard? They couldn't offer discounts to those that get their
software certified (and most larger OEM's create their own software for a
number of things) instead of just producing buggy garbage?
> Innovations:
> Microsoft may not provide any incentives for the inclusion of
> products for which there are other competitors. For example,
> Microsoft may offer Internet Explorer as a complimentary product,
> but may not make the inclusion of it, or it's placement on the
> desktop a requirement for aquiring the operating system.
Well, guess MS would have to get rid of the calculator, wordpad, notepad,
edit, more, the CD command (since commercial versions of these exist). It
couldn't even ship with a command line shell since that would put hardship
on 4Dos.
> Predatory coding:
> Microsoft may not create code that would damage any existing
> subsystem whether provided by Microsoft or any competitor. This
> includes any modifications of the Master Boot Record, the
> partitioning, or the release of upgrades that damage competitor
> products. When there are disputes over predatory code, Microsoft
> will submit the code in question. The arbiter could be the FTC.
So, how would those cluless newbies you mentioned earlier figure out how to
modify their own MBR?
> The Findings of Fact Stand:
> All portions of Judge Jackson's findings of fact are accepted
> by Microsoft. Microsoft will be given amnesty for previous
> conduct, but will be treated as a monopoly, and all testimony
> and findings can be used in the event of future misconduct.
There are things in the findings of fact that are proveably wrong. For
instance, this would essentially make it law that Apple could not compete
with Microsoft for the same market. The FoF is also misleading in many
places. The testimony about OS/2 completely ignores the fact that IBM was a
competitor to other OEM's, and that most OEM's wouldn't put OS/2 on their
systems if they were paid to do so, regardless of any MS contracts.
> Nondisclosure Agreements:
> When a competitive standard is provided in a publicly available
> formate, Microsoft may not use nondisclosure agreements or
> incentivess for creating alternative proprietary standards.
> All future communications protocols will be regulated by the
> Federal Communications Commission. The use of proprietary
> hardware interfaces will be regulated by the Federal Trade
> Commission. This will only apply to protocols and standards
> that are not available under the same terms as competitive
> standards, and will only apply to standards bodies in which
> Microsoft is a contributing member. Microsoft may not use
> nondisclosure agreements to prevent the disclosure of
> information that could otherwise be copyrighted or patented.
I assume you're talking about Java here. Java is not, nor is it likely to
ever be, a standard other than a defacto one. Even then, Sun does a great
job of violating it by itself in it's various version changes.
> Deceptive Marketing:
> Microsoft will not be allowed to use nondisclosure agreements
> to suppress reports which are accurate but unfavorable to
> Microsoft. This includes, but is not limited to, benchmark
> results, bug reports, feature comparisons, or comparisons to
> competing technology.
With the exception of beta software (which NDA's should apply to, since the
results can change), the NDA's you're referring to are signed in order to
get free versions of the code for testing. If they want to do non-biased
benchmarks, they could buy it.
> Conditions for lifting the restrictions:
> The restrictions listed above would be lifted once competitors
> have penetrated at least 50% of the market. This includes both
> coexistant (dual-boot) systems and competitor only systems.
> This 50% will only include those platforms on which Microsoft
> Operating Systems are licenced and the regulations would be
> lifted on a market-segment by market-segment basis. Thus,
> if Microsoft controls less than 50% of the hand-held market,
> there would be no restrictions on that market, but the existing
> restrictions would still exist in the Intel PC market.
Microsoft is not being tried for any other market than PC operating systems.
Therefore, any agreement should only apply to that.
> The 50% rule also applies to all competitive products installed
> on an after-market basis.
Huh?
> Penalties and Enforcement:
>
> If Microsoft violates the initial court decree, they would
> be in contempt of court. Furthermore, executives ordering
> actions which violate this agreement could be jailed for
> contempt, fined based on a percentage of personal assets, or
> prosecuted under criminal racketeering laws.
That would be unconstitutional, given that the Sherman Act is a civil,
rather than criminal code.
> Microsoft would be fully liable for all damages to competitors
> and for damages to the consumer market as a whole for any
> violations. These would be subject to binding arbitration by
> an appellate court and could only be appealed to the supreme
> court.
And tie up the legal system for decades while companies try to make fast
bucks by claiming violations.
mj...@mindspring.com
independent applications software company.
The law should be passed that no computer or harddrive can be sold
by with a preinstalled OS or be bundled with and OS or software. No
hardware manufacturer, OS producer, or application software producer
can be operate in any of the other field and may not form stratigic
agreements with any of the prohibited fields. Much like the division of
banks, insurance, and security brokerages after the crash of 1929.
If a computer hardware firm wants to provide copies of of OS's
"preinstalled", they would have to sell the OS as a sepperate
purchase with the installation media preconfigured with all needed
drivers to automatically install to OS onto the precise computer model
for which they would have other wise install it on to. The customized OS
packages and media should be marked with a message like:
"Warning this copy of GeeWizOS version 3.5 has been customized
for use on Supercomp model 20X3.Y revision 30.1 computers only.
This copy of GeeWizOS and may not operate on any other computers
including on a Supercomp model 20X3.Y revision 30.1 computers if
modified in any way from the factory configuration.".
Any violation of the rules should be punishable under RICO. I am certain
that I have left some loop holes in this discription, but you get the
general
idea.
Zalek...@hotmail.com wrote in message
<38df501d...@news.bellatlantic.net>...
>There should be a law that a customer must have a right to buy any PC
>without any operating system installed.
>This will give a customer choice of any OS, or if someone aleady have
>Win on desktop, why he/she have to pay to M$ an additional fee for OS
>on laptop?
>
>Zalek
Erik Funkenbusch
> IE is a problem in several areas. First, it was used as a cover for
> shipping most of the binaries for Microsoft Office, which would have
> been treated as bundling. Most of the ActiveX controls bundled with
> explorer, including the excel viewer, powerpoint viewer, word viewer,
> and chart viewer, were effectively a thinly veiled attempt to smuggle
> in the OLE and COM objects of Windows and make them memory resident.
Sounds plausible, like many of your statements until reality is checked. IE
does *NOT* ship with viewers for powerpoint, word, or excel. You need to
download those seperately.
> Had Microsoft simply stuck with an enhanced version of Mosaic, and
> complied with the original terms of the original NCSA license
> agreement, I wouldn't have been terribly upset. But Microsoft's
> use of an Open Source project to perpetuate it's own proprietary
> technology without the consent of the thousands of people who
> contributed freely to Mosaic and NCSA/Apache for the express
> purpose of userping public standards with it's own tightly
> controlled standards is unacceptable.
Microsoft bought a liscense to SPYGLASS moasic, not NCSA mosaic. Spyglass
was granted the exclusive right to resell liscenses for NCSA mosaic by the
NCSA.
> For example, the IETF publishes specifications for nearly every
> protocol used on the internet, except for the proprietary stuff
> used by Microsoft. There was a reason for this in 1982 and it's
> just as valid today. It was believed that regardless of how good
> the security system was, if traffic went across the internet that
> couldn't be indentified, traced, and audited, then the entire
> infrastructure was vulnerable to attack.
And which protocols might those be? There aren't many of them. Even many
of the protocols Microsoft developed or co-developed exist as RFC's. PPTP
for instance.
> With the introduction of ActiveX controls, there have been more
> breaches of security, more invasions of personal privacy, and more
> examples of fraud and corruption by supposedly trusted people.
The only security breaches that I'm aware of relating to ActiveX was when
the controls were installed improperly and marked safe for scripting when
they were not. Can you name some?
R.E.Ballard
dark...@x-mail.net wrote:
> Microsoft should have to seperate the Windows OS from Internet
> Explorer. Everyone should have the option to delete the browser
> (which you can't do with IE).
IE is a problem in several areas. First, it was used as a cover for
shipping most of the binaries for Microsoft Office, which would have
been treated as bundling. Most of the ActiveX controls bundled with
explorer, including the excel viewer, powerpoint viewer, word viewer,
and chart viewer, were effectively a thinly veiled attempt to smuggle
in the OLE and COM objects of Windows and make them memory resident.
This would then make Microsoft Office appear to have a smaller
footprint, but not a smaller price-tag. It would also assure
Microsoft of control of the underlying infrastructure, application
programmer interfaces, and run-time libraries.
Had Microsoft simply stuck with an enhanced version of Mosaic, and
complied with the original terms of the original NCSA license
agreement, I wouldn't have been terribly upset. But Microsoft's
use of an Open Source project to perpetuate it's own proprietary
technology without the consent of the thousands of people who
contributed freely to Mosaic and NCSA/Apache for the express
purpose of userping public standards with it's own tightly
controlled standards is unacceptable.
This is why I proposed an injunction preventing Microsoft from
interefering with, or preventing the publication of, industry
standards, especially when competitive standards have been published,
or the related standards have been published.
For example, the IETF publishes specifications for nearly every
protocol used on the internet, except for the proprietary stuff
used by Microsoft. There was a reason for this in 1982 and it's
just as valid today. It was believed that regardless of how good
the security system was, if traffic went across the internet that
couldn't be indentified, traced, and audited, then the entire
infrastructure was vulnerable to attack.
Ironically, by keeping the specifications open, including the
DES encryption technology, it became possible to manage the traffic
of millions of computers and to identify hostile users and dangerous
hosts. The CERT organizations has been able to trace and stop
numerous willful and accidental denial of service attacks, security
breaches, and publication of informtion like credit card numbers and
calling card numbers.
With the introduction of ActiveX controls, there have been more
breaches of security, more invasions of personal privacy, and more
examples of fraud and corruption by supposedly trusted people.
> No company or individual should be
> forced to use an operating system
> they don't want to.
This is currently out of the scope of the current litigation, but
the DOJ or the FTC should examine Microsoft's role in corporate
policies that mandate Microsoft Operating Systems, Microsoft
Office Suites, Microsoft Explorer as Browser, and Microsoft
servers.
Even in situations where the choice was required to go to a
competitive bidding process, the bidding process was ignored
and the contract was simply awarded to Microsoft. This includes
numerous federal contracts. Corel recently overturned one decision
when it was shown that a contract that required mandatory open bidding
was never even put through the bidding process.
These activities should also be investigated and prosecuted, possibly
under RICO statutes, but these issues were not presented during the
case, and may dependent on whether Microsoft is legally defined
as a monopoly. In any settlement, Microsoft must accept that it
currently is a monopoly and has used that position to extend that
monopoly into other markets. That one point is critical. It means
that Microsoft will be subject to all provisions of the Sherman Act
and the Clayton Act in all future dealings and operations.
The settlement should be a "probation", not an amnesty or a pardon.
If Microsoft violates that probation, the plea bargain is off, and
the full force of the law would be available.
If on the other hand, Microsoft is able to slide away without
accepting the Findings of Fact, all evidence gathered to this
point would no longer be relevant in any future antitrust case.
With Microsoft now extending it's monopoly into mass media (imagine
if Microsoft decided to merge with General Electric). Microsoft
already has strong ties in the form of MSNBC, CNBC, and all NBC
web sites. Microsoft/Bill Gates also has substantial interest
in Primestar, which is now part of Dish Network, and in several
cable companies. In most cases the percentage held is enough to
be influential, and enough to start a proxy fight, but not enough
to show up on the SEC radar.
> There are too few types of computers readily
> avaiable that you can choose the OS that comes
> with it or no OS at all.
Perhapse the best solution would be to install ALL of them on
the master disk, and then allow the user to format the partitions
that weren't needed. With 40 gigabyte drives, there's room for
about 10 different operating systems, and still have room for a huge
"common area" (a Fat32 partition?).
> Many people buy from chain stores and they come with Win98; and they
> would not think of putting Linux on there for you.
Many people buy their clothes at K-Mart too. This doesn't mean
that there aren't people willing to pay a little extra for tailored
suits, designer labels, and a bit more personal attention.
The same is true with Computers. Sure, there might still be a huge
market for CompUSA (the K-mart of Computer stores) but there might
be room for "botique" stores that would install Linux for you, that
would let you choose from a menu applicatons.
Certainly companies like Dell that give you your choice of video cards,
sound cards, hard drive sizes, CD-ROM speeds, and preinstalled RAM size
wouldn't mind spending an extra 30 seconds adding Linux (actually,
all disks could be mastered with Linux, but for Windows-only systems,
Dell would simply format the Linux partition as a "D:drive".
> For an open market companies and people need to be given a choice.
Actually, in a competitive marketplace - you might have several
choices. You could have several operating systems installed, and
perhaps even have them running concurrently.
> For all the criminal activities, Microsoft should pay a heavy fine.
The activities described in the findings of fact imply much more than
just civil (lawsuit penalties), but each executive involved would be
entitled to a jury trial. We have seen numerous examples of
fraud, extortion, blackmail, and racketeering within the summary.
Of course, the judge can only rule on the charges presented by the
prosecution. The judge could also add contempt charges.
Microsoft should probably do anything to prevent a final ruling which
would not grant conditional forgiveness of previous activities. We
have several examples of perjury, admissions of extortion, and
justifications for blackmail. Ironically, in many cases, Microsoft
didn't even deny the activities, but merely attempted to justify
their acts as necessary or typical.
It is unlikely that anyone would be prosecuted for perjury based
on testimony given in a civil case (it almost never happens). But
it would be appropriate to determine whether criminal activities
have been committed (again - with the goal of probation rather than
prison).
Ultimately, Microsoft must accept a plea-bargain, not an exhoneration.
The DOJ and the AGs cannot and should not accept any settlement that
allows Microsoft to claim that it did nothing wrong. If Microsoft
want to take it's chances with the Supreme Court, then Microsoft
should stop stalling and accept the ruling, and realize that their
next appeal will be directly to the Supreme Court. Microsoft has
been stalling and delaying long enough.
R.E.Ballard
"Erik Funkenbusch" <er...@visi.com> wrote:
> R.E.Ballard ( Rex Ballard ) <r.e.b...@usa.net> wrote in message
> news:8bqurt$hal$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> > Bad idea. Most customers don't have the
> > technical expertise to install
> > off-the-shelf versions of any operating system,
> > including windows, without the special OEM files
> > provided by the manufacturer.
> I'm glad you recognize this, since it
> conflicts with parts of your later
> statements.
I've generally asserted that there are a substantial number of
people who can (perhaps 35-40%) install Linux with the aid
of appropriate supports (prompt files or configuration settings
provided by the product makers). I had no trouble installing
Corel, Mandrake, and SuSE on my ThinkPad. I don't have the sound
cards up, or the winmodem, but I found a cheap real-modem and
the sound drivers are available but it's not that high a priority.
My son had no trouble installing Mandrake on his home PC, once we
installed a Linux compatible card. I paid $15 for the card, and
it took 15 minutes to switch.
> > So getting to the bottom line: What should be included in the
> > settlement.
> >
> > Business Practices:
> >
> > Pricing schedule:
> > Microsoft should be allowed a spead of 20% on no more than 50%
> > of the previous year's sales. If the manufacturer orders more
> > than 50% of the previous year's sales, they will get no further
> > discount. The Federal Trade Commission would be given the right
> > to monitor all contracts to make sure than the spread does not
> > exceed 20%.
>
> So now you are penalizing an OEM for
> increasing their sales by more than 50%.
No. The OEM still gets the 20% discount because he's a big
volume customer. He just doesn't get MORE than 20% off.
The problem with the 1994 agreement was that Microsoft reserved
the right to set it's own pricing schedules and then used this
practice to circumvent the clause which forbade "per processor
licenses". Since Microsoft couldn't force the OEMs to put Windows
on each machine, they made it cheaper for the OEM to purchase 120% of
what he could possibly need than to purchase 80% and order more at
the same discount. Of course, if the OEM overestimated his need,
part of the process for getting credit was to show that they had
installed Windows on every machine.
Microsoft also punished OEMs who didn't accept all of Microsoft's
terms and who didn't install Microsoft tie-in software instead of
a competitors. IBM was charged as much as 9 times more because
it refused to stop installing Lotus Smart Suite.
Finally, Microsoft threatened to revoke licensing agreements
on an "all or nothing basis" because Compaq refused to accept
the conditions that prevented the installation of Netscape as the
primary browser on the desktop. Keep in mind that Compaq hadn't
uninstalled IE, they had just taken it off the desktop and put
Netscape in it's place.
> If I buy 1 copy last year, and this year I want 100,
> I have to pay full price for 98 of them?
No, you'd get the 20% discount, because you purchased more than
50%. You just wouldn't get an 80% discount for buying 120 of
them (which would then mean you pay less for 120 than for 80).
> > Tie-ins:
> > Microsoft will not be able to offer discounts in exchange for
> > non-monetary compensation such as the inclusion or exclusion of
> > competitor productes. Each component much be independently
> > managed and marketed.
>
> So, Microsoft could not offer discounts to OEM's that, say,
> follow the latest PCxx standard?
Nope! Especially that! Microsoft want to dictate hardware
standards and shouldn't have the right to do this. This is
especially true of protected standards like USB and DVD-CSS.
If it's in the OEMs best interest to produce PCxx machines, then
Microsoft doesn't need to offer a deeper discount. If instead,
the OEM could make a better or cheaper machine by using Fire-Wire
and DVD drives that can be used with Linux (CSS encription on-chip),
then they shouldn't fear a reprisal. This is how Microsoft
maintains it's monopoly. Pull out this prop and the market becomes
more competitive. In most cases, Microsoft rewards OEMs who
use Microsoft-exclusive technology and punishes OEMs who use
Linux-inclusive (competitor inclusive) technology.
> They couldn't offer discounts to those that get their
> software certified (and most larger OEM's create
> their own software for a number of things)
> instead of just producing buggy garbage?
Nope! If an OEM wants a really good driver, he can hire a
Microsoft consultant at $280 an hour to help out. If the
OEM can't get a working driver in a few months, then the
problem is with Microsoft, not the OEM. Perhapse the OEM
would rather market Linux on that hardware.
Again, the goal is to create a competitive market in which
Microsoft no longer has the monopoly control. When Microsoft
is the only game in town, you must accept Microsoft's terms.
When the OEM has a choice of an operating system published
by an uncooperative provider (Microsoft) and an operating
system published with complete source code and debugging tools,
Microsoft will have no choice but to be more cooperative and
competitive.
> > Innovations:
> > Microsoft may not provide any incentives for the inclusion of
> > products for which there are other competitors. For example,
> > Microsoft may offer Internet Explorer as a complimentary product,
> > but may not make the inclusion of it, or it's placement on the
> > desktop a requirement for aquiring the operating system.
>
> Well, guess MS would have to get rid of the calculator,
> wordpad, notepad, edit, more,
> the CD command (since commercial versions of these exist).
First of all, I said that Microsoft could not force the inclusion
of these things as a condition of the operating system installation.
In most cases, the OEM would simply include Microsoft's tools. But
they could choose instead to install an updated version of the
Borland (now Inprise) versions. Microsoft would not be able to
demand that only the Microsoft versions could be installed, nor
could they demand that their versions be installed or left installed.
It's possible that an OEM might want to install the qt versions,
which are compatible with KDE implementations.
> It couldn't even ship with a command line shell
> since that would put hardship on 4Dos.
Microsoft could provide a command line shell, but they couldn't
prohibit an OEM from installing a fully functional Korn shell,
or PERL, or even EMACS. If the OEM wanted to install the entire
MKS toolkit, Microsoft wouldn't be allowed to prevent it.
Furthermore, Microsoft might need the MS-DOS command.com shell
for it's internal scripts, but that doesn't mean that the OEM
can't move the shortcut to a more or less prominent part of
the desktop (in the Accessories folder for example). The
OEM might also want to put IE5 in the accessories folder as well.
> > Predatory coding:
> > Microsoft may not create code that would damage any existing
> > subsystem whether provided by Microsoft or any competitor. This
> > includes any modifications of the Master Boot Record, the
> > partitioning, or the release of upgrades that damage competitor
> > products. When there are disputes over predatory code, Microsoft
> > will submit the code in question. The arbiter could be the FTC.
>
> So, how would those cluless newbies you
> mentioned earlier figure out how to
> modify their own MBR?
If a Linux system was already installed, Microsoft would have
to either honor the Linux partition, or offer the user the option
of either leaving the MBR as is (meaning that Microsoft would have
to add instructions for setting up Windows on Klilo and LILO), letting
the user use Microsoft boot manager that could boot both systems,
or installing Windows over Linux. The key is that it would always
be the user's choice. Furthermore, if Microsoft damaged a user's
system without the user's direct interaction and without warning
the user of the consequences of taking such an action, it would be
the same as a hacker sending out the explore-zip virus. The
code in question was posing as benovolent and useful code, but
willfully damaged an existing system.
Under the computer tresspassing act, programs that format hard drives,
remove user files, and mess around with boot tracks are normally
treated as criminal activities. A Windows 98 installation procedure
that damages the code already installed on a system is merely a very
expensive virus.
The distributors of other operating systems, in a competitive
environment have had no trouble adhering to the law. They make
every effort to preserve the integrity of the previously installed
software. This is true of BEOS, Linux, and BSD. I haven't tried
installing Solaris for Intel on Windows 9x or Windows NT system.
> > The Findings of Fact Stand:
> > All portions of Judge Jackson's findings of fact are accepted
> > by Microsoft. Microsoft will be given amnesty for previous
> > conduct, but will be treated as a monopoly, and all testimony
> > and findings can be used in the event of future misconduct.
>
> There are things in the findings of fact
> that are proveably wrong.
Then Microsoft should take it's chances with the ruling. If
Microsoft wants to "cop a plea", they need to accept the evidence
presented and accept the judges Finding of Fact. At this point,
Microsoft is seeking to avoid a verdict which may lead to both
civil and criminal charges. It's like the man accused of murder
who could possibly refute some of the evidence, but accepts a
lesser charge of manslaughter rather than risk execution.
> For instance, this would essentially make
> it law that Apple could not compete
> with Microsoft for the same market.
No. It merely define the market in which Microsoft had a monopoly,
and explained why Apple was not currently a legitimate competitor
in that monopoly. Microsoft presented it's case that it was a bit
player in a larger market, but the Judge defined the nature of
the monopoly. He ruled that Microsoft controlled the Intel PC
market, both through the application base and through the cost
of replacing the hardware. He noted that while Apple also made
computers, that the cost of replacing the hardware so that users
could run Apple's operating system too prohibitive - thus another
barrier to entry.
If Apple decided to make an Intel version of OS/X, and then captured
30% of the INTEL PC market with this operating system, then Microsoft
would no longer be a monopoly and would no longer be subject to the
Sherman act and Clayton act.
> The FoF is also misleading in many places.
The Judge makes the final determination based on the evidence
presented in the courtroom. Microsoft had it's chance to present
it's side of the case, and often made an embarrassing spectacle of
itself. Fortunately for Microsoft, most of the country was too
busy following the Monica Lewinsky scandal first leaked by the MSNBC
web site, covered nearly 8 hours per day during prime-time by MSNBC,
and nearly 4 hours per day by CNBC.
Microsoft used it's affiliation with NBC to make SURE that the
Microsoft trial received as little coverage as possible.
> The testimony about OS/2 completely ignores
> the fact that IBM was a competitor to other OEM's,
Irrelevant. Microsoft attempted to prevent IBM from putting
OS/2 an it's OWN machines. IBM might have become a viable
competitor, but Microsoft stonewalled IBM up to 15 minutes before
the "Big event" unveiling. Even this was only done so that Microsoft
could say list the IBM logo on it's list of Windows supporters.
> and that most OEM's wouldn't put OS/2 on their
> systems if they were paid to do so,
> regardless of any MS contracts.
That wasn't the issue. The issue was that IBM was prevented
from marketing it's own product. Microsoft admitted to issuing
an ultimatum that IBM either stop selling OS/2 or they wouldn't
get Windows 95. When that didn't work, Microsoft admitted that
they demanded a license audit and demanded a $30 million payment
along with an agreement that IBM stop promoting OS/2 before any
further negotiations could take place.
It's entirely possible that IBM would eventually have dropped
OS/2 voluntarily, but instead IBM wasn't even allowed to tell
it's customers what Microsoft had done. They just simply stopped
advertising OS/2, stopped shipping OS/2 systems to retailers, and
stopped direct-selling OS/2 to customers except when requested
by the customer. IBM literally killed the demand for a product
which it had purchased at a very high price from Microsoft.
> > Nondisclosure Agreements:
> > When a competitive standard is provided in a publicly available
> > formate, Microsoft may not use nondisclosure agreements or
> > incentivess for creating alternative proprietary standards.
> > All future communications protocols will be regulated by the
> > Federal Communications Commission. The use of proprietary
> > hardware interfaces will be regulated by the Federal Trade
> > Commission. This will only apply to protocols and standards
> > that are not available under the same terms as competitive
> > standards, and will only apply to standards bodies in which
> > Microsoft is a contributing member. Microsoft may not use
> > nondisclosure agreements to prevent the disclosure of
> > information that could otherwise be copyrighted or patented.
>
> I assume you're talking about Java here.
Java, CORBA, HTML, XML, TCP/IP, DNS, ARP, LDAP, X.509, SCSI,
FireWire (IEEE), NFS, HTTP, Postscript, TeX, SGML, CGM, GIF,
JPEG, MPEG, ext2, tar, lf delimited text, ... all components
of POSIX level 3, UNIX 95... all components of Linux...
> Java is not, nor is it likely to ever be,
> a standard other than a defacto one.
BINGO!!!
Furthermore, the defacto seems to be JDK 1.1.8 rather than JDK 1.2
> Even then, Sun does a great
> job of violating it by itself in
> it's various version changes.
Yes. This is why JDK 1.1.8 has been widely adopted and JDK 1.2
or 2.0 are still in the background. Even EJB enjoys limited support
and depends on 1.1.8 backward compatibility.
> > Deceptive Marketing:
> > Microsoft will not be allowed to use nondisclosure agreements
> > to suppress reports which are accurate but unfavorable to
> > Microsoft. This includes, but is not limited to, benchmark
> > results, bug reports, feature comparisons, or comparisons to
> > competing technology.
>
> With the exception of beta software
> (which NDA's should apply to, since the
> results can change),
But the terms of the beta agreement do not terminate with
the general release software.
> the NDA's you're referring to are signed in order to
> get free versions of the code for testing.
Actually, free or discounted versions. For example, you
are bound by such terms when you get the combination of
MSDN Enterprise and a "Strategic alliance agreement".
Microsoft refutes the credibility of anyone who does not have
a strategic alliance agreement. They can't have it both ways.
They either have to allow publication of whatever facts may
be relevant, or they have to accpte the results conducted
by independent testers - which may include Linux zealots.
> If they want to do non-biased benchmarks, they could buy it.
It's very hard to find anyone whose company hasn't signed a
strategic agreement with Microsoft that contains this restricted
disclosure clause.
For nearly every single previous employer, I was able to purchase
my own software at standard CompUSA prices, run my own benchmarks,
and even publish my findings within the company, but I was not
allowed to disclose these result to outside sources without
Microsoft's permission. At each employer, I was also able to
find other independent benchmarks which were unfavorable to
Microsoft, but were classified as company confidential. I can't
even talk about them now.
Finally, even though I was able to make back-ups of some systems,
it would be a violation of my previous employment agreements to
publish certain Microsoft related information on my web site.
> > Conditions for lifting the restrictions:
> > The restrictions listed above would be lifted once competitors
> > have penetrated at least 50% of the market. This includes both
> > coexistant (dual-boot) systems and competitor only systems.
> > This 50% will only include those platforms on which Microsoft
> > Operating Systems are licenced and the regulations would be
> > lifted on a market-segment by market-segment basis. Thus,
> > if Microsoft controls less than 50% of the hand-held market,
> > there would be no restrictions on that market, but the existing
> > restrictions would still exist in the Intel PC market.
>
> Microsoft is not being tried for any
> other market than PC operating systems.
> Therefore, any agreement should only apply to that.
Sounds fair. The exception being that Microsoft might attempt
to use it's current monopoly of Personal Computers to extend
it's monopoly of hand-held or appliance systems.
The key is that Microsoft can't count palm-pilots and say that
palm has 50% of the PC market. They can't count appliance
machines such a the QUBE or Cisco Routers and say that Cisco
has 50% of the market.
The key factor is that Microsoft can't unilaterally redefine
the market and use that redefinition a case for lifting the
restrictions.
If the DOJ/FTC decides to include appliance workstations and
NCs or LCs as part of the overall market definition, that
is something that both sides would have to mutually agree to.
This might even mean that Microsoft wouldn't be regulated in
the Internet Server market (since they only have 25% of that
market). I'd leave that one up as a bargaining chip.
> > The 50% rule also applies to all competitive products installed
> > on an after-market basis.
>
> Huh?
If somebody comes up with a franchise that installs Linux on PCs
at a local Kiosk, and that suddenly drives the Linux market so
high that Linux is sitting on over 50% of the PCs being sold,
then Microsoft would no longer have a monopoly. They would
have a viable competitor (or two or three) and restrictions
would no longer be neccessary.
I really don't think that we need to regulate Microsoft forever.
Eventually, when we start seeing retail PCs displayed on the retail
shelves that run Linux as well as, or instead of Microsoft Windows,
consumers will be making their own choices. Microsoft might still
be the dominant player - with 4 linux distributors, BEOS, and 3
BSD distributors all competing for pieces of the market on a coresident
or exclusive basis.
Once this happens, the nature market forces will encourage the adoption
of open standards and Open Source (or multiplatform) solutions that are
not entirely dependent on the whims of Microsoft. At this point,
if Microsoft tried to say "you need us, you can't survive without us,
and you must stop selling anything but our products", the OEMs would
laugh, and ask them whether or not they wanted 30 or 40% of the market.
> > Penalties and Enforcement:
> >
> > If Microsoft violates the initial court decree, they would
> > be in contempt of court. Furthermore, executives ordering
> > actions which violate this agreement could be jailed for
> > contempt, fined based on a percentage of personal assets, or
> > prosecuted under criminal racketeering laws.
>
> That would be unconstitutional,
We jail noncustodial parents for failing to comply with the terms
of a voluntary civil settlement, often for up to 5 years without
even a trial. If the executives know that they could be jailed
for contempt, they might think very carefully before even thinking
about trying to tap-dance around the settlement, the way they did
in 1996.
> given that the Sherman Act is a civil,
> rather than criminal code.
Slapping Microsoft with a $1 million/day penalty isn't dealing
with the right problem. It hurts the investors, but Bill Gates,
Steve Ballmer, and Paul Allen own over 60% of the company. They
can't be fired, they can't be voted out by a board of directors,
and they can't be forced to resign.
My guess is that if Bill Gates had to spend a few nights
in a federal jail, he wouldn't even think about issuing a
memo demanding that OEMs ignore the terms of the settlement.
It's very important that the settlement be made public as well.
The OEMs, the Consumers, and the Competitors must know the terms
and be willing to "blow the whistle" if they even think that
these terms are being violated.
> > Microsoft would be fully liable for all damages to competitors
> > and for damages to the consumer market as a whole for any
> > violations. These would be subject to binding arbitration by
> > an appellate court and could only be appealed to the supreme
> > court.
>
> And tie up the legal system for decades
> while companies try to make fast
> bucks by claiming violations.
Yup! If there is a case, and Microsoft doesn't want to settle,
they can be hauled through the courts over and over until they
learn to behave.
Remember though, this restriction only stays in effect until
Microsoft's market share drops below 50%. After that, the
Judge and the DOJ would declare that Microsoft is no longer a
monopoly, and no longer subject to the Sherman act.
If Microsoft looses the market, then comes back with something
that will "blow the socks off of everybody", and the OEMs, competitors,
and consumers willingly put themselves back into being at the mercy
of the new Microsoft Monopoly, it was their choice. But the DOJ
would have a much harder time proving that the public was damaged
by that choice.
R.E.Ballard
"Erik Funkenbusch" <er...@visi.com> wrote:
> R.E.Ballard ( Rex Ballard ) <r.e.b...@usa.net> wrote in message
> > IE is a problem in several areas. First, it was used as a cover for
> > shipping most of the binaries for Microsoft Office, which would
have
> > been treated as bundling. Most of the ActiveX controls bundled with
> > explorer, including the excel viewer, powerpoint viewer, word
viewer,
> > and chart viewer, were effectively a thinly veiled attempt to
smuggle
> > in the OLE and COM objects of Windows and make them memory
resident.
>
checked. IE
> does *NOT* ship with viewers for powerpoint, word, or excel. You need
to
> download those seperately.
True, but a very large portion of this software is already installed
into the standard windows distribution. The viewers are merely the
"face" of the application that has already been embedded.
Some of this is also included in wordpad as well.
> > Had Microsoft simply stuck with an enhanced version of Mosaic, and
> > complied with the original terms of the original NCSA license
> > agreement, I wouldn't have been terribly upset. But Microsoft's
> > use of an Open Source project to perpetuate it's own proprietary
> > technology without the consent of the thousands of people who
> > contributed freely to Mosaic and NCSA/Apache for the express
> > purpose of userping public standards with it's own tightly
> > controlled standards is unacceptable.
>
> Microsoft bought a liscense to SPYGLASS moasic,
> not NCSA mosaic. Spyglass was granted the exclusive
> right to resell liscenses for NCSA mosaic by the
> NCSA.
What the contributors to NCSA Mosaic were told by NCSA was that
Spyglass wanted "Branding Rights". This primarily consisted of
the ability to put a logo where the Mosaic ICON was originally,
and the ability to preload the bookmarks file.
There were specific exclusions - many developers, including Marc
Andreeson specifically denied the request to modify the executable
binary outside of the NCSA public license (Open Source).
About two weeks before Microsoft was approached, NCSA unilaterally
changed the terms of the license, giving NCSA the right to do whatever
it wanted. This was done ex-post-facto, and was a direct violation
of the trust which led to hundreds of contributions, upgrades, and
bug-fixes contributed by companies who would NEVER have given their
code directly to Microsoft. Some of these contributors included
companies like Sun, HP, SGI, and other UNIX vendors. The LAST
thing they would have wanted would have been to have Mosaic put
directly inder the control of Microsoft.
When the news broke that (I thought it was Spry - not Spyglass),
had sold unconditional modification rights to Microsoft, along
with the protection of comprehensive nondisclosures, the flack
flew with a vengence.
I had written the specifications to 5 major enhancements which
were critical to e-commerce. This included specifications for
SHTTP, SSL, Cookies, and htaccess, along with the original
specifications for the earliest web browser (Viola). I put
them on the internet. In several cases, I even published them
under the terms of the GNU general public license.
Of course, since I was a faceless personality on the internet
and the online-newspapers and online-news mailing lists (currently
online-n...@planetall.com), I was pretty much anonymous,
which was appropriate for that period of my life. I have included
some of the work I did to "put the 'com' in '.com'" on my personal
web site.
> > For example, the IETF publishes specifications for nearly every
> > protocol used on the internet, except for the proprietary stuff
> > used by Microsoft. There was a reason for this in 1982 and it's
> > just as valid today. It was believed that regardless of how good
> > the security system was, if traffic went across the internet that
> > couldn't be indentified, traced, and audited, then the entire
> > infrastructure was vulnerable to attack.
>
> And which protocols might those be?
> There aren't many of them.
TCP/IP, IP, DNS, HTTP, HTML, MIME, TCP/IP over PPP, Frame Relay, and
ATM, arp, smtp, nntp, snmp - in all over 3000 RFCs covering everything
from the IP address to multimedia.
> Even many of the protocols Microsoft developed
> or co-developed exist as RFC's.
> PPTP for instance.
This is true. On the other hand, MOST of Microsoft's specifications
are incomplete or ambiguous. This includes MS-CHAP, WINS, for several
years SMB, and Imap, and most recently DCOM and ActiveX. Furthermore,
most of these measures were proposed as a means of allowing Microsoft
to transmit binaries - some of which contain executable code - across
the internet.
One of the reasons ARPA formed what is now the IETF in the first
place was to prevent the unfiltered proliferation of executible
binaries across the internet. Using FTP to download a program,
and then choosing to execute that program gives a substantial
audit trail including the TCP connection log, the FTP transfer log,
the image stored on the hard drive, and in the case of files FTP'd
using a web browser, the HTTP log. There is still a chance that
the DNS name was spoofed, the IP address was spoofed into the router,
and that the binaries will erase themselves after doing their damage,
but these are security risks that can be identified, managed, and
mitigated. Using ActiveX, a hacker can put his content on an
unsuspecting site, register the control using information
obtained from a wallet left with a coat-check service, and
let unsuspecting users download programs that send confidential
files (e-mail, passwords, whatever) to competitors, or to the
"highest bidder".
> > With the introduction of ActiveX controls, there have been more
> > breaches of security, more invasions of personal privacy, and more
> > examples of fraud and corruption by supposedly trusted people.
>
> The only security breaches that I'm
> aware of relating to ActiveX was when
> the controls were installed improperly
> and marked safe for scripting when
> they were not. Can you name some?
Read www.ultraviolet.org. The defense given is that the
user gives permission to automatically load ActiveX controls
which then allows the ActiveX control to access files on the
hard drive.
Keep in mind that Microsoft and several other companies
use these controls for "support functions", which includes
license registration, piracy detection, upgrade notification,
and even automated upgrade of application software.
One option is to check the "ask for permission on each ActiveX
control", but you are immediately inundated with so many permission
requests that you eventually end up ignoring them anyway. I tried
running in "confirm mode" and was shocked at some of the "signatures"
that were being accepted by the system. Many corporations have
a strict policy of disabling ActiveX controls entirely.
Erik Funkenbusch
> > Sounds plausible, like many of your statements until reality is
> checked. IE
> > does *NOT* ship with viewers for powerpoint, word, or excel. You need
> to
> > download those seperately.
>
> True, but a very large portion of this software is already installed
> into the standard windows distribution. The viewers are merely the
> "face" of the application that has already been embedded.
Backpeddling already? You claimed that IE installed these controlls and
that it did so to make Office's footprint seem smaller. So are you now
admitting you were lying?
> Some of this is also included in wordpad as well.
The source code to wordpad is available. IF you had bothered to look at it,
you would know that wordpad supports a very tiny fraction of the word file
format specification and *NONE* of the word rendering or editing code.
> > Microsoft bought a liscense to SPYGLASS moasic,
> > not NCSA mosaic. Spyglass was granted the exclusive
> > right to resell liscenses for NCSA mosaic by the
> > NCSA.
>
> What the contributors to NCSA Mosaic were told by NCSA was that
> Spyglass wanted "Branding Rights". This primarily consisted of
> the ability to put a logo where the Mosaic ICON was originally,
> and the ability to preload the bookmarks file.
My understanding is that, like the JPL, since NCSA is a government funded
agency, then everything that's not classified that they produce must be
released to the public free of charge (since the taxpayers already paid for
it). The NCSA can get additional funding by selling liscenses to source
code, which it has done with (for example, the NCSA web server it sold to
Netscape).
> There were specific exclusions - many developers, including Marc
> Andreeson specifically denied the request to modify the executable
> binary outside of the NCSA public license (Open Source).
Most of the developers were student interns (including andreeson) with no
rights in the release of the products.
> About two weeks before Microsoft was approached, NCSA unilaterally
> changed the terms of the license, giving NCSA the right to do whatever
> it wanted. This was done ex-post-facto, and was a direct violation
> of the trust which led to hundreds of contributions, upgrades, and
> bug-fixes contributed by companies who would NEVER have given their
> code directly to Microsoft. Some of these contributors included
> companies like Sun, HP, SGI, and other UNIX vendors. The LAST
> thing they would have wanted would have been to have Mosaic put
> directly inder the control of Microsoft.
Mosaic isn't and never was put directly under the control of Microsoft.
Mosaic still exists and is Microsoft free. Microsoft only had the rights to
modify their own version.
> When the news broke that (I thought it was Spry - not Spyglass),
> had sold unconditional modification rights to Microsoft, along
> with the protection of comprehensive nondisclosures, the flack
> flew with a vengence.
From the IE "About" dialog:
"Based on NCSA Mosaic. NCSA Mosaic(TM); was developed at the National Center
for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign.
Distributed under a licensing agreement with Spyglass, Inc."
In any event, even if what you said is true, Microsoft has done no wrong.
*IF* what you said is true (which I doubt), then NCSA would be the ones that
violated anything.
> I had written the specifications to 5 major enhancements which
> were critical to e-commerce. This included specifications for
> SHTTP, SSL, Cookies, and htaccess, along with the original
> specifications for the earliest web browser (Viola). I put
> them on the internet. In several cases, I even published them
> under the terms of the GNU general public license.
Considering that e-commerce didn't even exist then, I find that hard to
believe. It's my understanding that Netscape published the cookie
specification as well as SSL. At least RFC 2246 says so.
> Of course, since I was a faceless personality on the internet
> and the online-newspapers and online-news mailing lists (currently
> online-n...@planetall.com), I was pretty much anonymous,
> which was appropriate for that period of my life. I have included
> some of the work I did to "put the 'com' in '.com'" on my personal
> web site.
So you're saying that Netscape "stole" the credit for the work you did? Not
even giving you a passing reference? If you published under GPL, you would
have had to have used your name in the copyright.
> > > For example, the IETF publishes specifications for nearly every
> > > protocol used on the internet, except for the proprietary stuff
> > > used by Microsoft. There was a reason for this in 1982 and it's
> > > just as valid today. It was believed that regardless of how good
> > > the security system was, if traffic went across the internet that
> > > couldn't be indentified, traced, and audited, then the entire
> > > infrastructure was vulnerable to attack.
> >
> > And which protocols might those be?
> > There aren't many of them.
>
> TCP/IP, IP, DNS, HTTP, HTML, MIME, TCP/IP over PPP, Frame Relay, and
> ATM, arp, smtp, nntp, snmp - in all over 3000 RFCs covering everything
> from the IP address to multimedia.
No, which PROPRIETARY protocols from MS would that be?
> > Even many of the protocols Microsoft developed
> > or co-developed exist as RFC's.
> > PPTP for instance.
>
> This is true. On the other hand, MOST of Microsoft's specifications
> are incomplete or ambiguous. This includes MS-CHAP, WINS, for several
> years SMB, and Imap, and most recently DCOM and ActiveX. Furthermore,
> most of these measures were proposed as a means of allowing Microsoft
> to transmit binaries - some of which contain executable code - across
> the internet.
I don't think MS invented IMAP. And ActiveX is fully documented by the Open
Group and has been for years.
> One of the reasons ARPA formed what is now the IETF in the first
> place was to prevent the unfiltered proliferation of executible
> binaries across the internet.
Funny, I thought it was formed to promote open protocol standards.
> Using FTP to download a program,
> and then choosing to execute that program gives a substantial
> audit trail including the TCP connection log, the FTP transfer log,
> the image stored on the hard drive, and in the case of files FTP'd
> using a web browser, the HTTP log. There is still a chance that
> the DNS name was spoofed, the IP address was spoofed into the router,
> and that the binaries will erase themselves after doing their damage,
> but these are security risks that can be identified, managed, and
> mitigated. Using ActiveX, a hacker can put his content on an
> unsuspecting site, register the control using information
> obtained from a wallet left with a coat-check service, and
> let unsuspecting users download programs that send confidential
> files (e-mail, passwords, whatever) to competitors, or to the
> "highest bidder".
The key word here is "can". To date, I know of no registered activex
control that does this. It's a long shot.
> > > With the introduction of ActiveX controls, there have been more
> > > breaches of security, more invasions of personal privacy, and more
> > > examples of fraud and corruption by supposedly trusted people.
> >
> > The only security breaches that I'm
> > aware of relating to ActiveX was when
> > the controls were installed improperly
> > and marked safe for scripting when
> > they were not. Can you name some?
>
> Read www.ultraviolet.org. The defense given is that the
> user gives permission to automatically load ActiveX controls
> which then allows the ActiveX control to access files on the
> hard drive.
>
> Keep in mind that Microsoft and several other companies
> use these controls for "support functions", which includes
> license registration, piracy detection, upgrade notification,
> and even automated upgrade of application software.
>
> One option is to check the "ask for permission on each ActiveX
> control", but you are immediately inundated with so many permission
> requests that you eventually end up ignoring them anyway. I tried
> running in "confirm mode" and was shocked at some of the "signatures"
> that were being accepted by the system. Many corporations have
> a strict policy of disabling ActiveX controls entirely.
Nonsense. I've never told the browser to accept all content for anything,
and I don't get "inundated" and in fact very rarely do I see any kind of
request except for a few common controls from verified sources (such as
Macromedia Flash). Something you fail to mention is that "confirm mode" is
the default mode.
R.E.Ballard
"Erik Funkenbusch" <er...@visi.com> wrote:
> R.E.Ballard ( Rex Ballard ) <r.e.b...@usa.net> wrote in message
> news:8bt8jj$2vv$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> > What the contributors to NCSA Mosaic were told by NCSA was that
> > Spyglass wanted "Branding Rights". This primarily consisted of
> > the ability to put a logo where the Mosaic ICON was originally,
> > and the ability to preload the bookmarks file.
>
> My understanding is that, like the JPL,
> since NCSA is a government funded
> agency, then everything that's not
> classified that they produce must be
> released to the public free of charge
> (since the taxpayers already paid for
> it).
The original (circa 1993-1994) license to Mosaic was very
similar to the GNU Public License. Enhancements had to
be returned to the original author, the NCSA had the right
to distribute the code, with source code, and users could
not modify the source code without returning the enhancements
to NCSA.
Marc Andreeson, the primary contributor and principle coordinator
for Mosaic eventually went on to create Netscape. The key was
that he used NONE of the original Mosaic code and requested
permission to use enhancements made to Mosaic in Netscape from
the various contributors. At that time, there was a bit of
contriversy over Netscape's use of NCSA technology, but Marc
tried very hard to do right by people. Very few involved with
Mosaic realized how valuable web browsers would become, they
often settled for complimentary copies of Netscape and limited
distribution rights.
> The NCSA can get additional funding
> by selling liscenses to source
> code, which it has done with
> (for example, the NCSA web server it sold to
> Netscape).
The problem was that the NCSA had made one agreement, promising
to keep all of this technology protected under a public license,
and then the NCSA unilaterally altered the terms of the license.
In fact, the NCSA unilaterally altered the terms several times.
People objected to the first Prodigy version which wouldn't let
you type in a URL. They objected to an AOL version that ran TCL
extensions. Each time Spry came back requesting another alteration
to the contract, none of the contributors were notified.
Eventually, most of the contributors switched their support to
Arena, which was a GPL version of Mosaic that was part of the FSF
archive and was used as a reference model for HTML 4. Unfortunately,
Netscape refused to allow SSL and certain fire-wall enhancements to
be included in Arena (I'm sure part of it was because FSF insisted
that they not enforce their SSL patent rights :-).
The new W3C XML reference model - Opera, isn't even available in a
public license version. Eventually, the KDE and GNOME teams created
browsers capable of displaying XML documents containing all W3C
approved features. The KDE explorer follows the Microsoft IE
lead in that the explorer doubles as a web browser.
> > There were specific exclusions - many developers, including Marc
> > Andreeson specifically denied the request to modify the executable
> > binary outside of the NCSA public license (Open Source).
>
> Most of the developers were student interns
> (including andreeson) with no
> rights in the release of the products.
Actually, most of the contributors were independent
contributors who were not doing work for hire. They
were contributing their own ideas, on their own time,
using their own equipment, and on their own money.
In some cases, the contributors were consultants who were
using client equipment, but with the understanding that
their contributions to Mosaic was not covered under "Work for Hire"
provisions.
There were even some people who were working as employees
for privately held corporations (I was working for Dow Jones much
of this time) who had no interest in the Web browser until
after Netscape went public. Most of these employers had already
given away their intellectual property rights.
> > About two weeks before Microsoft was approached, NCSA unilaterally
> > changed the terms of the license, giving NCSA the right to do
whatever
> > it wanted. This was done ex-post-facto, and was a direct violation
> > of the trust which led to hundreds of contributions, upgrades, and
> > bug-fixes contributed by companies who would NEVER have given their
> > code directly to Microsoft. Some of these contributors included
> > companies like Sun, HP, SGI, and other UNIX vendors. The LAST
> > thing they would have wanted would have been to have Mosaic put
> > directly inder the control of Microsoft.
>
> Mosaic isn't and never was put directly
> under the control of Microsoft.
The key is that Microsoft now has the right to make inlimited
modifications, for any purpose, without being required to make
those enhancements available to the public in source format.
This was a key provision in the original code, a provision whithout
which, contributions would have been diverted to an alternate project
(as they were eventually directed to Arena).
> Mosaic still exists and is Microsoft free.
Correct. It's a dead horse. No one wants to touch it.
> Microsoft only had the rights to
> modify their own version.
This was the key issue from the very beginning. The contributors
had agreed to allow "Branding Rigts", which would have included
the right to put different logos in the corners, to change the
home to a corporate site, and to preload the "favorites" file
(similar to bookmarks) with a set of preferred sites.
One of the big issues was that some people wanted to do plug-ins
like Netscape's. There was a resounding "No" vote within the
mosaic newsgroup. The discussion was very adamant in it's opposition
to creating the ability to graft proprietary code to the core Open
Source software. Prophetically, one of the biggest concerns was
that it would promote the proliferation of proprietary standards
like PDF, Word, Excel, and Powerpoint, instead of promoting open
standards like HTML, GIF, and JPEG. Ironically, no one objected
to the GIF patent, as long as the implementation was available
in source code format.
> > When the news broke that (I thought it was Spry - not Spyglass),
> > had sold unconditional modification rights to Microsoft, along
> > with the protection of comprehensive nondisclosures, the flack
> > flew with a vengence.
>
> From the IE "About" dialog:
>
> "Based on NCSA Mosaic. NCSA Mosaic(TM);
> was developed at the National Center
> for Supercomputing Applications at
> the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
> Distributed under a licensing agreement with Spyglass, Inc."
>
> In any event, even if what you said is true,
> Microsoft has done no wrong.
Microsoft may have done with Spyglass to get Mosaic what they did
with SCC to get CP/M. SCC had been granted permission to reassemble
the source code to CP/M-80 using an 8086 assembler which made it
possible to run it on an 8086 machine. SCC had specifically been
granted permission to use this product on embedded systems.
SCC sold the code to Paul Allen, and Paul Allen stretch the
interpretation of embedded systems to include "terminals". Since
the first 8088 PC was actually a souped up 3270 terminal (the circuitry
was very similar and most of the team had been working in the terminal
division).
Digital Research settled out of Court because the guy who sold QDOS
to Paul Allen had already spent most of the $100,000 he had received
and wasn't even worth the legal fees to file the case. Shortly after
all claims were settled, the employees of SCC were either hired by
Microsoft or paid off ($900,000) making the "Real Deal" worth about
$1 million.
In the case of Spyglass, Microsoft used Spyglass and had spyglass
sell "branding versions" to AOL and Prodigy before Microsoft
altered the contract, signed it, and gave Spyglass a very short
turn-around time. Rather than expose Spyglass to liability (and
forfeit the $10 million spyglass had already raised), the NCSA
published a revised contract. The developers cried "foul", most
stopped contributing to both Mosaic and the NCSA web server, and
eventually they formed the Apache group which returned to the
original terms (actually slightly more GPL-ish).
At one point, there was discussion of a class-action suit, but
the consensus was that the cost of trying to sue the government
would be far greater than the amount it received from Microsoft.
> *IF* what you said is true (which I doubt),
> then NCSA would be the ones that
> violated anything.
They violated a public trust. Most of the contributors have
taken control away from NCSA through the formation of Apache,
Arena, and support for Linux.
> > I had written the specifications to 5 major enhancements which
> > were critical to e-commerce. This included specifications for
> > SHTTP, SSL, Cookies, and htaccess, along with the original
> > specifications for the earliest web browser (Viola). I put
> > them on the internet. In several cases, I even published them
> > under the terms of the GNU general public license.
>
> Considering that e-commerce didn't even exist then,
> I find that hard to believe.
Remember, I was wery active in the entire commercialization of
the internet from 1992 on. Part of that effort included working
closely with the NCSA development teams - via e-mail, and with
the publishers.
> It's my understanding that Netscape published the cookie
> specification as well as SSL. At least RFC 2246 says so.
This is correct. It was drafted by a usenet newsgroup and
two mailing lists (one for the client, one for the server),
and the concept was specified in that forum. Because SSL
depended on the use of both Public Key (RSA) and Private Key (DSL),
and there was too much contriversy around PGP at the time (the RSA
lawsuit, federal prosecution of the PGP authors, and classification
of PGP as munitions by the Clinton Administration, Netscape
published the specification and provided secure distribution.
> > Of course, since I was a faceless personality on the internet
> > and the online-newspapers and online-news mailing lists (currently
> > online-n...@planetall.com), I was pretty much anonymous,
> > which was appropriate for that period of my life. I have included
> > some of the work I did to "put the 'com' in '.com'" on my personal
> > web site.
>
> So you're saying that Netscape "stole" the
> credit for the work you did?
No, I was one of about 8 people who collaborated via e-mail.
I wrote a spec and some pseudo-code. That was formed into
code stubs, and the code stubs were integrated into the next
month's release of Mosaic. The SSL was integrated into Netscape
(because the NCSA couldn't control distribution - it could be
downloaded by the restricted countries). Netscape then published
the source code to the SSL "hook" which could be downloaded from
Netscape and integrated into Mosaic and later, Arena.
> Not even giving you a passing reference?
Actually, on 3 separate occaisions they offered me a position
with the company. In each case, I had just accepted a new
position and was no longer available.
Also, when I wrote to Jim Barksdale, and suggested that if
Microsoft wanted to give away browsers with their operating
system, then Netscape could give away Operating Systems with
their browser - (Linux). Less than one week later, Netscape
and Caldera had a joint licensing agreement in which Caldera
provided the Operating System and Netscape provided the Browser.
Within a month, Netscape had a deal with Red Hat.
> If you published under GPL, you would
> have had to have used your name in the copyright.
Like I said, I'd posted the spec and pseudo code with a
copyright notice and statement that this material was
published under the terms of the GPL. Specifications
are often implemented without reference to their source.
I was deliberately anonymous during this period. My employer
knew what I was doing, didn't care what I did on my own time,
and didn't want to be implicated in anything that would upset
their relations with Microsoft. At that time, Microsoft was
still designing MSN under the "single service" model - similar
to AOL or Prodigy. My work in commercializing the internet
had to be done covertly. Eventually, I was approached by
reporters and was told that I could not make any public
statements. Greg Gerdy became my "Face" on the DowVision
on the Net project. He began going on speaking tours, using
reports I had written for him at his request.
All of this is on my web site www.open4success.com/bio
Keep in mind that in January 1993, there were only about 200
people who could even conceive of what the Internet would
eventually become. One was Brewster Kahle who had left Thinking
Machines to form a company based on his WAIS search engine, the
grandaddy of nearly all of the modern search engines used on web
portals. Another was Chuck Menges who managed Colorado Supernet,
one of the first ISPs to offer direct-to-the-public access to the
Internet. Another was Vint Cerf, who was snagged by MCI at around
the same time I was working with their frame-relay sales director
(Rocky Mountain Region) to put businesses and NSF traffic on the
same TCP/IP links. Another was Steve Outings, who started the
first internet based mailing list for publishers who wanted
to publish content on the internet. Another was Mindy McAdams,
who was pivotal in helping us reach the "non-geek" markets,
especially sports and women's interests. Most of these people
are people you will probably never see on the cover of Forbes,
because they aren't CEOs of multi-billion dollar companies, just
the guys who stoked the fires of these multi-billion dollar
companies.
You've seen my postings, and you are probably somewhat aware of the
volume of traffic I post - as many as 300 articles/month. Imagine
the impact of that number of postings - each relatively articulate
and informative, every day, to a network of nearly 8000 publishers,
4000 ISPs, and 3000 POPs.
Sun put the "dot" in "dot-com". I put the "com" in "dot-com", and
I didn't do it alone. It was more like the rodents who ate the
dinosours. Most of the members of these groups were tech-heads
who took my postings, put their name on them, and prettied them up
with Microsoft Word, and passed them up the chain to top management.
In many cases, the name on the bottom was removed (mine) and the
next manager up the chain of command put his name on top.
I'm living a very nice life. I get paid well for doing what I love
to do, and there are plenty of people who are willing to pay me more
if I wanted it. I get to travel, I get to make new friends, I get
to go to some Linux Expos, and I get to generate new markets for new
products. I'm an IT architect, not a CEO. I'd hate to have to spend
80% of my time trying to manage cash-flow and decide who else's ideas
would get funded or not. I love working as a consultant for companies
who have "hit the wall" and are looking for a "Problem Solver". I love
working with companies who are ready to try some outrageous ideas to
achieve outrageous results.
Sure, if I had purchased 200 shares of every company I'd impacted in
a positive way, I'd be a gazillionaire. On the other hand, some of
those companies were a roller coaster ride for several years and some
were transformed and transmuted beyond recognition. Companies like
ClickShare, First Virtual Holdings, and New Century Networks no longer
exist, their pioneering technology has been absorbed by mergers and
aquisitions.
The problem with the ActiveX specification is that it specifies
the wrapper, the shell, the envelope, but it hides all indications
of the contents. Given that ActiveX controls are effectively
executable code passing from a server to a client, all you have
done is relieved the hacker of the inconvenience of having to
have a user ID and password to execute his trashing code.
Fortunately, it's a federal crime to do this, and there are
enough open standards in place that it's becoming easier to
trace this type of hacking back to it's origins, and most of
the perpetrators are either more committed to stealth (getting
your customer list without you knowing they have been there),
or more committed to recognition (the "Kilroy was Here" posts).
Hopefully we won't have to deal with the spectre of cyber-mercenaries
who use untracable access to trash - every PC used for online
trading, for example. Imagin what would happen if one of these guys
decided to publish concurrent sell orders from every Ameritrade,
E-trade, and Suretrade customer on the interet - within a 30 minute
time frame.
> > One of the reasons ARPA formed what is now the IETF in the first
> > place was to prevent the unfiltered proliferation of executible
> > binaries across the internet.
>
> Funny, I thought it was formed to promote open protocol standards.
>
> > Using FTP to download a program,
> > and then choosing to execute that program gives a substantial
> > audit trail including the TCP connection log, the FTP transfer log,
> > the image stored on the hard drive, and in the case of files FTP'd
> > using a web browser, the HTTP log. There is still a chance that
> > the DNS name was spoofed, the IP address was spoofed into the
router,
> > and that the binaries will erase themselves after doing their
damage,
> > but these are security risks that can be identified, managed, and
> > mitigated. Using ActiveX, a hacker can put his content on an
> > unsuspecting site, register the control using information
> > obtained from a wallet left with a coat-check service, and
> > let unsuspecting users download programs that send confidential
> > files (e-mail, passwords, whatever) to competitors, or to the
> > "highest bidder".
>
> The key word here is "can". To date, I know of no registered activex
> control that does this. It's a long shot.
Actually, when ActiveX first came out, a site called
www.ultrviolet.org sponsored by our own Tracy Reed, listed
a number of different "hacks" that were possible using ActiveX.
Visitors were shown examples of how these controls exposed the
system. All but one - the one that said "Don't push this button",
were harmless. The marked button was surrounded with text explaining
that what it did was erased every file on your hard drive and replaced
every byte with randomly generated characters (assuring no possibility
of file recovery).
Eventually, the example were removed at the request of FBI agents
who had discovered a group of hackers that had used the ultraviolet
examples to create some really malicious code, specifically for
reading other people's e-mail. They were clued in by a sudden
flurry of traffic around 3:00 A.M.
>
> Nonsense. I've never told the browser
> to accept all content for anything,
Of course not. That's the default for the browser.
> and I don't get "inundated" and in fact very
> rarely do I see any kind of
> request except for a few common controls
> from verified sources (such as
> Macromedia Flash).
> Something you fail to mention is that "confirm mode" is
> the default mode.
When I've used a corporate installation (Prudential),
ActiveX was entirely disabled an couldn't be enabled. This
used to frustrate me because I did want to see the MSN Portfolio
charting feature and scrolling headlines.
When I installed Windows 98, with IE4, the defaults were to accept
all controls from trusted authorities, Verisign and Microsoft were
both preset as trusted authorities.
When I installed ActiveX on a Netscape Browser, Verisign was trusted,
but Microsoft was not preset (the first visit to MSN triggered a
"do you want to trust this authority?). I kept saying no, and
accidentally hit the wrong button.
Some companies create their own signing authority for connections
within the firewall. The firewall and the firewall router blocks
and flags all attempts to connect to any of the known signing
authorities. It works, but it gives an indication of the concern
that these companies have over this technology.
R.E.Ballard
"Erik Funkenbusch" <er...@visi.com> wrote:
> Bill Gates has one of the smallest salaries in
> the industry (for a fortune 500 company).
> He's made the vast majority of his money from stock,
> not from people that purchased Microsoft software.
Bill Gates also has one of the largest stakes in a company
in the industry. At one point he held almost 35%. Gates,
Ballmer, and Allen jointly control nearly 25% of the company.
Just this month, Gates sold 1 million shares of Microsoft stock.
He's been sliding out slow and easy. Gates is down to 787 million
shares. Paul Allen is selling off even faster. He owns 259 million
shares and has sold over 2.8 million this month.
At the rate they are going, if Microsoft stock held it's current
price, and there were no splits, and they continued to sell 1 million
shares per month, Gates would last another 65 years (about 110)? And
of course, both Gates and Allen are notorious for their individual
investments, and the investments of their venture capital funds.
Paul Allen has invested in companies like AOL and Transmeta,
and Gates owns substantial interests in Satellite dishes, cable
networks, and television networks. The really fun part is that
both GE and Microsoft have several of the same top 10 holding
companies.
Company %MSFT %GE (NBC,MSNBC,CNBC)
Fidelity Management & Research 3.73 3.78
Barkleys Bank PLC 2.81 2.94
State Street Bank 1.81 1.81
Vanguard Group 1.58 1.58
AXA Financial 1.16
Taunus Corp 1.54 1.28
Mellon Private Asset Management 1.08 1.31
Then we have the mutual funds:
Fidelity Magellan 1.10 0.89
Vanguard 500 0.82 0.81
Fidelity Growth and Income. 0.59 0.35
Simply put, Bill has some very big friends, but none of them
have the power to push Bill around. The combined proxy power
of all of the mutuls and institutions combined couldn't
outvote Bill. In fact, it would take Steve Ballmer AND Paul
Allen AND the combined votes of the institutions to stop Bill
Gates from doing anything or to make him do anything. Meanwhile,
the CEOs of companies like GE hold 0.02% of the company, about
781 thousand shares.
Sure, Bill gives his employees a few hundred shares of Microsoft
stock instead of cash, and then he dilutes the value by dumping
$95 million in less than a week.
Is it any wonder than when Microsoft Executives were being fried
on the Witness stand, that Bill's request that NBC find some
other story to make really really hot - might be accepted. And
wasn't it thoughtful of an anonymous tipster to leak news of an
illegal wire-tap that indicated that the President might have had
a quickie - would conveniently appear in a prominent location on
the MSNBC web site, right at that moment.
I'm sure it was just a coincidence :-).
I can't help wondering how many journalists or editors would have
published the details of an illegal wire-tap - regardless of the
implications (since the information obtained in the wire-tap
was legally still private until and unless a judge ruled that
it was admissable - which would have exposed the publishers to
substantial liability).
FDR kept the press from taking pictures of him in his wheel-chair,
and MSNBC decides to dedicate 40 hours/week of PRIME TIME to coverage
of whether the President touched her directly on the labia - but
without actually ever publishing the exact text of the question.
About the only way you could get the actual text was to go to
the federal court web site.
I don't doubt that Clinton was a scoundral, and I'm no big fan
of Clinton. I'm a registered Republican. But I was very interested
in what was happening to the richest man in the world in federal court,
and getting incredibly bored with whether or not Monica was wearing
her underwear.
Erik Funkenbusch
> > > > > For example, the IETF publishes specifications for nearly every
> > > > > protocol used on the internet, except for the proprietary stuff
> > > > > used by Microsoft. There was a reason for this in 1982 and it's
> > > > > just as valid today. It was believed that regardless of how
> good
> > > > > the security system was, if traffic went across the internet
> that
> > > > > couldn't be indentified, traced, and audited, then the entire
> > > > > infrastructure was vulnerable to attack.
> > > >
> > > > And which protocols might those be?
> > > > There aren't many of them.
> > >
> > > TCP/IP, IP, DNS, HTTP, HTML, MIME, TCP/IP over PPP, Frame Relay,
> and
> > > ATM, arp, smtp, nntp, snmp - in all over 3000 RFCs covering
> everything
> > > from the IP address to multimedia.
> >
> > No, which PROPRIETARY protocols from MS would that be?
I notice you didn't back up your assertion when asked.
> > > One of the reasons ARPA formed what is now the IETF in the first
> > > place was to prevent the unfiltered proliferation of executible
> > > binaries across the internet.
> >
> > Funny, I thought it was formed to promote open protocol standards.
Also no response.
> > Nonsense. I've never told the browser
> > to accept all content for anything,
>
> Of course not. That's the default for the browser.
No, it's not. The default is the medium security model, which asks you if
you want to install all ActiveX controls that are in pages.
> > Something you fail to mention is that "confirm mode" is
> > the default mode.
>
> When I've used a corporate installation (Prudential),
> ActiveX was entirely disabled an couldn't be enabled. This
> used to frustrate me because I did want to see the MSN Portfolio
> charting feature and scrolling headlines.
>
> When I installed Windows 98, with IE4, the defaults were to accept
> all controls from trusted authorities, Verisign and Microsoft were
> both preset as trusted authorities.
Untrue. Windows 98 and IE4 do not default to accepting Microsoft and
Verisign. They don't default to accepting anything.
> When I installed ActiveX on a Netscape Browser, Verisign was trusted,
> but Microsoft was not preset (the first visit to MSN triggered a
> "do you want to trust this authority?). I kept saying no, and
> accidentally hit the wrong button.
Most web sites have different content based on the browser you have. I find
it difficult to believe that a netscape optimized page would have active
content.
R.E.Ballard
"Erik Funkenbusch" <er...@visi.com> wrote:
> R.E.Ballard ( Rex Ballard ) <r.e.b...@usa.net> wrote in message
> news:8bt8jj$2vv$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> > > word, or excel. You need to download those seperately.
> >
> > True, but a very large portion of this software is already
installed
> > into the standard windows distribution. The viewers are merely the
> > "face" of the application that has already been embedded.
>
> Backpeddling already? You claimed that IE installed these controlls
and
> that it did so to make Office's footprint seem smaller. So are you
now
> admitting you were lying?
The bottom line is that when Microsoft was forbidden to bundle
Microsoft Office with Microsoft Windows, Microsoft bundled all
of the DLLs, infrastructure code, and binaries required to
implement Office, and then provided a free viewer - This is
yet another attempt to maintain and sustain the "Applications Barrier
to Entry". Microsoft attempted to userp the public standard by
making it's proprietary standard freely available - as a viewer,
making it's control of Office a strategic product - keeping the
value of MS-Office artificially higher than it would have been
if the public had widely accepted Netscape Communicator or other
third party products capable of generating public standard formats
such as HTML, SGML, and TeX.
> > > And which protocols might those be?
> > > There aren't many of them.
> >
> > TCP/IP, IP, DNS, HTTP, HTML, MIME, TCP/IP over PPP, Frame Relay,
and
> > ATM, arp, smtp, nntp, snmp - in all over 3000 RFCs covering
everything
> > from the IP address to multimedia.
>
> No, which PROPRIETARY protocols from MS would that be?
Protocols and File formats which are sent across Internet links.
These would include MSWord documents, Excel Spreadsheets, Powerpoint
Presentations, and anything else capable of passing an executable
OLE/COM object embedded within the document.
Again, in a competitive Market, customers wouldn't tolerate the
passing of "black wire" - binaries that cannot be audited for
the nature of the content. Even encrypted content can be audited
once it is decrypted.
> > One of the reasons ARPA formed what is now the IETF in the first
> > place was to prevent the unfiltered proliferation of executible
> > binaries across the internet.
>
> Funny, I thought it was formed to promote open protocol standards.
Actually it was both. The primary concern of ArpaNet was that
if they couldn't control the protocols, that people would be
sending messages designed to damage the system. One of the big
contriversies was the TN3270 protocol. Eventually, the issue
was resolved with the implementation of TN3270 under the BSD license.
The real issue, for the purposes of a DOJ settlement, is that Microsoft
uses it's file formats, whether stored on files, or passed across
the internet, to protect it's Application Barrier to Entry.
In the competitive IT markets such as UNIX, most vendors conform
to open and published standards. Microsoft refuses to conform
to these standards.
Microsoft must provide sufficient detail of the protocols and
file formats to facilitate GPL reference implementations, and
under the terms of the GPL - - especially if they want to
put that format across the internet.
Again, the goal here is to create a competitive environment in the PC
market that is as competitive as the current UNIX market, where
Microsoft may be the dominant player, but is no longer a monopoly.
Once the competitive market is achieved, Microsoft can do whatever it
wants. If customers would really rather pay $600 for an Office
Suite made by Microsoft for the $400 Operating System made by
Microsoft, in a competitive market (because it's easier
to Learn and Use), it doesn't mean that those who want the $100
Office Suite for the $40 Operating System will automatically be
excluded from all corporate communication and economic opportunity.
The key is that if Microsoft tries to return to "Black Files and
Black Wires" in an environment where 60% of the market is using
Open Standards and Open Source based products, Microsoft users
would have a very hard time having that proprietary content
accepted by Managers, coworkers, clients, customers, and vendors.
Jeremy Allison
>And which protocols might those be? There aren't many of them. Even many
>of the protocols Microsoft developed or co-developed exist as RFC's. PPTP
>for instance.
There are *hundereds* of them - maybe even thousands.
All the code generated from the IDL files that define
the protocols MS uses (running over DCE/RPC, which is a
published standard) to manage NT domains, NT users,
NT machines, Exchange servers... the list goes on.
All of these are used as hidden proprietary wedges
to drive the adoption of Microsoft servers due to
the fact that Microsoft clients only support these
protocols. *That's* the real monopolistic practice
that needs to be curbed by law.
In addition, the modifications to the DCE/RPC security
system that MS made (to use NTLMv1, NTLMv2) need to be
published. Yes I know Luke in the Samba Team has
reverse engineered many of these, but that's not the
point.
MS should publish the IDL for these protocols, and the
modifications made to DCE/RPC to support the Microsoft
proprietary security protocols.
That's what *I* mean by "full and open disclosure of
the Windows API's" :-).
Someone once said that "if Microsoft had invented the
Internet, we wouldn't have protocols, we'd have API's".
Regards,
Jeremy Allison,
Samba Team.
Erik Funkenbusch
news:8c2t5j$tsm$1...@slb2.atl.mindspring.net...
> "Erik Funkenbusch" <er...@visi.com> writes:
>
> >And which protocols might those be? There aren't many of them. Even
many
> >of the protocols Microsoft developed or co-developed exist as RFC's.
PPTP
> >for instance.
>
> There are *hundereds* of them - maybe even thousands.
> All the code generated from the IDL files that define
> the protocols MS uses (running over DCE/RPC, which is a
> published standard) to manage NT domains, NT users,
> NT machines, Exchange servers... the list goes on.
That's ONE protocol, not hundreds or thousands. And it's not a proprietary
one, since it still understands DCE/RPC. You just can't use the extensions.
The protocol is the same many of those, they just use different data
formats. MAPI is pretty well defined for instance.
> All of these are used as hidden proprietary wedges
> to drive the adoption of Microsoft servers due to
> the fact that Microsoft clients only support these
> protocols. *That's* the real monopolistic practice
> that needs to be curbed by law.
They "only" support these protocols? How is it that Lotus Notes works then?
> In addition, the modifications to the DCE/RPC security
> system that MS made (to use NTLMv1, NTLMv2) need to be
> published. Yes I know Luke in the Samba Team has
> reverse engineered many of these, but that's not the
> point.
I see nothing wrong with them adding extensions as long as they still
understand the base protocols.
> MS should publish the IDL for these protocols, and the
> modifications made to DCE/RPC to support the Microsoft
> proprietary security protocols.
IDL is not a "protocol", well, only in the most nit-picky universe it is.
It's a data format. If you start calling all data formats protocols, then
file formats are protocols.
> That's what *I* mean by "full and open disclosure of
> the Windows API's" :-).
I see nothing wrong with Microsoft adding extensions. Everyone in the
industry does it. Sun does. HP does. IBM does. And often those
extensions are considered trade secrets.
> Someone once said that "if Microsoft had invented the
> Internet, we wouldn't have protocols, we'd have API's".
Probably.
Erik Funkenbusch
> In article <jiwE4.804$75.1...@ptah.visi.com>,
> "Erik Funkenbusch" <er...@visi.com> wrote:
> > R.E.Ballard ( Rex Ballard ) <r.e.b...@usa.net> wrote in message
> > news:8bt8jj$2vv$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> > > > word, or excel. You need to download those seperately.
> > >
> > > True, but a very large portion of this software is already
> installed
> > > into the standard windows distribution. The viewers are merely the
> > > "face" of the application that has already been embedded.
> >
> > Backpeddling already? You claimed that IE installed these controlls
> and
> > that it did so to make Office's footprint seem smaller. So are you
> now
> > admitting you were lying?
>
> Microsoft Office with Microsoft Windows, Microsoft bundled all
> of the DLLs, infrastructure code, and binaries required to
> implement Office, and then provided a free viewer - This is
> yet another attempt to maintain and sustain the "Applications Barrier
> to Entry". Microsoft attempted to userp the public standard by
> making it's proprietary standard freely available - as a viewer,
> making it's control of Office a strategic product - keeping the
> value of MS-Office artificially higher than it would have been
> if the public had widely accepted Netscape Communicator or other
> third party products capable of generating public standard formats
> such as HTML, SGML, and TeX.
So, in other words. You lied when you said that Microsoft shipped them with
IE.
> > > > And which protocols might those be?
> > > > There aren't many of them.
> > >
> > > TCP/IP, IP, DNS, HTTP, HTML, MIME, TCP/IP over PPP, Frame Relay,
> and
> > > ATM, arp, smtp, nntp, snmp - in all over 3000 RFCs covering
> everything
> > > from the IP address to multimedia.
> >
> > No, which PROPRIETARY protocols from MS would that be?
>
> Protocols and File formats which are sent across Internet links.
> These would include MSWord documents, Excel Spreadsheets, Powerpoint
> Presentations, and anything else capable of passing an executable
> OLE/COM object embedded within the document.
So now it's protocols AND file formats.
I'll ask again. which *PROTOCOLS* are proprietary only to micorosoft?
File formats are not protocols. And Microsoft itself publishes the specs to
it's file formats.
I know of very few that are MS proprietary. Consider that many of those
protocols were co-developed with other vendors.
> Again, in a competitive Market, customers wouldn't tolerate the
> passing of "black wire" - binaries that cannot be audited for
> the nature of the content. Even encrypted content can be audited
> once it is decrypted.
Oh really? You're assuming that most people care. They don't. The ones
that do would not accept it, true. But that is a small minority.
Trust me, if MS's customers started to care about these things, MS would
bend over backwards to meet their needs. Microsoft knows how fickle the
customer is.
> > > One of the reasons ARPA formed what is now the IETF in the first
> > > place was to prevent the unfiltered proliferation of executible
> > > binaries across the internet.
> >
> > Funny, I thought it was formed to promote open protocol standards.
>
> Actually it was both. The primary concern of ArpaNet was that
> if they couldn't control the protocols, that people would be
> sending messages designed to damage the system. One of the big
> contriversies was the TN3270 protocol. Eventually, the issue
> was resolved with the implementation of TN3270 under the BSD license.
The Tao of IETF mentions nothing about binaries. I can also find no
reference whatsoever to the prevention of binaries being a primary reason
for the formation of the IETF. So, are you lying again? Why doesn't the
documentation support your assertion?
> The real issue, for the purposes of a DOJ settlement, is that Microsoft
> uses it's file formats, whether stored on files, or passed across
> the internet, to protect it's Application Barrier to Entry.
Then why does Microsoft publish those formats (in fact, they've published
them since the beginning of the MSDN).
> In the competitive IT markets such as UNIX, most vendors conform
> to open and published standards. Microsoft refuses to conform
> to these standards.
Strange that Windows 2000 has more standards compliance than ever before
then. Given that, as you say "Microsoft refuses to conform to these
standards". How can it be that Microsofts security model is based on
Kerberos, a publishes standard. How can it be that Microsoft worked closely
with the standards body to extend Kerberos in a standards compliant way.
(And don't bring up the issue about not-documenting the data format of the
extension fields. Nothing in the standard requires that they do so, it's
merely a good will gesture).
> Microsoft must provide sufficient detail of the protocols and
> file formats to facilitate GPL reference implementations, and
> under the terms of the GPL - - especially if they want to
> put that format across the internet.
Which protocols fall under the GPL liscense that Microsoft is using? And
why "must" they do so?
> Again, the goal here is to create a competitive environment in the PC
> market that is as competitive as the current UNIX market, where
> Microsoft may be the dominant player, but is no longer a monopoly.
Haven't you heard? Judge Jackson says that the Unix market is not the same
as Microsofts market, and that Linux and others are not considered
competition.
> Once the competitive market is achieved, Microsoft can do whatever it
> wants. If customers would really rather pay $600 for an Office
> Suite made by Microsoft for the $400 Operating System made by
> Microsoft, in a competitive market (because it's easier
> to Learn and Use), it doesn't mean that those who want the $100
> Office Suite for the $40 Operating System will automatically be
> excluded from all corporate communication and economic opportunity.
So your answer is to require Microsoft to play by the same rules as Unix,
which has hampered the development of Unix for the last 20+ years. That's
stupid. The Unix market has been fragmented for years and took the creation
of bodies like Posix to make it even mildly interoperative. The IETF was
created because of Unix's fragmentation, not because of Microsoft.
> The key is that if Microsoft tries to return to "Black Files and
> Black Wires" in an environment where 60% of the market is using
> Open Standards and Open Source based products, Microsoft users
> would have a very hard time having that proprietary content
> accepted by Managers, coworkers, clients, customers, and vendors.
60% of the market? Wow. Where did you pull that figure from? The DOJ says
Microsoft has 90% of the market.
Jeremy Allison
>That's ONE protocol, not hundreds or thousands. And it's not a proprietary
>one, since it still understands DCE/RPC. You just can't use the extensions.
>The protocol is the same many of those, they just use different data
>formats. MAPI is pretty well defined for instance.
The on the wire format used to control an NT Domain
controller is *not* documented. That's a protocol in
my book. As are the others. They are protocols layered
on top of DCE/RPC, in the same way that DCE/RPC is layered
on either SMB or TCP or UDP. But they're all protocols.
>They "only" support these protocols? How is it that Lotus Notes works then?
Lotus provides their own client and server programs.
They work on other systems as well as Microsoft. But
we're not talking about Lotus clients - we're talking
about Microsoft clients - you're changing the subject here.
>I see nothing wrong with them adding extensions as long as they still
>understand the base protocols.
But we're discussing punishment for a predatory monopoly
as defined by law here. That's part of the punishment,
publishing the extensions.
>> MS should publish the IDL for these protocols, and the
>> modifications made to DCE/RPC to support the Microsoft
>> proprietary security protocols.
>IDL is not a "protocol", well, only in the most nit-picky universe it is.
>It's a data format. If you start calling all data formats protocols, then
>file formats are protocols.
Not true. IDL formats *are* over-the-wire protocols.
NFS is defined this way, as is the portmapper protocol,
nlm and other parts of NFS. The entire protocol is defined
in IDL files with the extension of .x.
You are squirming here, as you are trying to get Microsoft
off the hook of having to document their over-the-wire
protocols. Doing so would allow competition in the server
market - the one Microsoft is attempting to use their client
side monopoly to take over.
I don't understand why you don't want this. Don't you
think it would be good for customers if they had the
choice of buying a non-Microsoft domain controller, or
Exchange-like server ? One that would interoperate
perfectly with the popular Microsoft clients ?
What is the gain you get from not allowing this ?
My gain in allowing this to happen is the further
extension and use of Samba as server software, I
have no problem admitting that. What benefit do you
get by helping Microsoft prevent this ?
>I see nothing wrong with Microsoft adding extensions. Everyone in the
>industry does it. Sun does. HP does. IBM does. And often those
>extensions are considered trade secrets.
Sun, HP and IBM are not predatory monopolies being punished.
Microsoft *is*. That's what we're discussing here (look at
the subject title :-). Publishing these over-the-wire
protocols is a fitting punishment to allow competition.
>> Someone once said that "if Microsoft had invented the
>> Internet, we wouldn't have protocols, we'd have API's".
>Probably.
And that would be a *bad* thing, as far as computing progress
is concerned.
Bob Hauck
>That's ONE protocol, not hundreds or thousands. And it's not a proprietary
>one, since it still understands DCE/RPC. You just can't use the extensions.
While that may be true, it is also of little use. Saying "it understands
DCE/RPC" does not define exactly what it does. Sort of like saying "it
uses SMTP" and then defining your own incompatible version of MIME, using
that and only that to format all messages, and then claiming standards
conformance.
>The protocol is the same many of those, they just use different data
>formats. MAPI is pretty well defined for instance.
MAPI is not a protocol, it is an API. There's a world of difference and
MS deliberately tries to cloud the issue. Lots of people seem to think
that TAPI and MAPI and so forth are protocols. They aren't.
>IDL is not a "protocol", well, only in the most nit-picky universe it is.
>It's a data format. If you start calling all data formats protocols, then
>file formats are protocols.
But not having those "data formats" is exactly why their claim that they
"support DCE/RPC" is useless in the case Jeremy was talking about. Sure,
it uses RPC, but in order to make any use of that you have to know the
data formats.
>> That's what *I* mean by "full and open disclosure of
>> the Windows API's" :-).
>
>I see nothing wrong with Microsoft adding extensions.
Yes, but MS's definition of "extension" seems to be that they will use
some protocol but invent their own undocumented data formats. This makes
the fact that they are using an ostensible standard fairly useless if
your goal is to interoperate with them.
I can understand that MS doesn't want anybody to make a competing product
that's compatible. However, it is hard to have your cake and eat it too.
--
-| Bob Hauck
-| To Whom You Are Speaking
-| http://www.bobh.org/
Erik Funkenbusch
> "Erik Funkenbusch" <er...@visi.com> writes:
>
> >That's ONE protocol, not hundreds or thousands. And it's not a
proprietary
> >one, since it still understands DCE/RPC. You just can't use the
extensions.
> >formats. MAPI is pretty well defined for instance.
>
> controller is *not* documented. That's a protocol in
> my book. As are the others. They are protocols layered
> on top of DCE/RPC, in the same way that DCE/RPC is layered
> on either SMB or TCP or UDP. But they're all protocols.
I would say that MS has a good excuse for not documenting certain security
oriented protocols. Let's not get into the argument of security by
obscurity, but the fact remains that It's much harder to crack an
undocumented protocol than a documented one given the same code. Even the
NSA prefers obscurity in addition to security, and they are the experts on
the subject.
> >They "only" support these protocols? How is it that Lotus Notes works
then?
>
> Lotus provides their own client and server programs.
> They work on other systems as well as Microsoft. But
> we're not talking about Lotus clients - we're talking
> about Microsoft clients - you're changing the subject here.
The statement was that Microsoft clients *ONLY* support Microsoft protocols.
That's not true. The existance of Notes and other client-side tools proves
that.
> >I see nothing wrong with them adding extensions as long as they still
> >understand the base protocols.
>
> But we're discussing punishment for a predatory monopoly
> as defined by law here. That's part of the punishment,
> publishing the extensions.
That may be the topic of the thread, but this sub-thread has ventured off on
a tangent. I still see nothing wrong with Microsoft adding extensions as
long as they still understand the base protocols. Judge White in the Java
case has even agreed.
> >IDL is not a "protocol", well, only in the most nit-picky universe it is.
> >It's a data format. If you start calling all data formats protocols,
then
> >file formats are protocols.
>
> Not true. IDL formats *are* over-the-wire protocols.
> NFS is defined this way, as is the portmapper protocol,
> nlm and other parts of NFS. The entire protocol is defined
> in IDL files with the extension of .x.
If that's the case, then every application out there with it's own IDL has
it's own proprietary protocol. Not very constructive.
> You are squirming here, as you are trying to get Microsoft
> off the hook of having to document their over-the-wire
> protocols. Doing so would allow competition in the server
> market - the one Microsoft is attempting to use their client
> side monopoly to take over.
I could care less. I simply don't think any company, monopoly or not should
have to expose it's trade secrets. Doing so is suicide. IBM was nearly
killed in the mid-80's because of the DOJ stranglehold on them in the form
of a consent decree.
> I don't understand why you don't want this. Don't you
> think it would be good for customers if they had the
> choice of buying a non-Microsoft domain controller, or
> Exchange-like server ? One that would interoperate
> perfectly with the popular Microsoft clients ?
Microsoft spent millions on the development of Exchange. I think they
should reap the rewards of that effort and not just give it away to anyone
that wants to copy it. That's why we have copyrights and patents. It gives
inventors financial incentive for inventing.
> What is the gain you get from not allowing this ?
> My gain in allowing this to happen is the further
> extension and use of Samba as server software, I
> have no problem admitting that. What benefit do you
> get by helping Microsoft prevent this ?
I'm not helping them do anything. I'm simply expressing my opinion. And
that is that as an inventor myself, I have the right to keep that invention
to myself and sell it without fear of anyone stealing it from me (without
legal recourse). I don't think that just because I have a lot of money, or
that my product is successful, I should have those rights stripped from me.
> >I see nothing wrong with Microsoft adding extensions. Everyone in the
> >industry does it. Sun does. HP does. IBM does. And often those
> >extensions are considered trade secrets.
>
> Sun, HP and IBM are not predatory monopolies being punished.
> Microsoft *is*. That's what we're discussing here (look at
> the subject title :-). Publishing these over-the-wire
> protocols is a fitting punishment to allow competition.
IBM was a monopoly, and was nearly killed because of government intrusion
into what they could and couldn't do. Sun wants to be another MS and HP...
well, HP is never sure what it wants ;)
> >> Someone once said that "if Microsoft had invented the
> >> Internet, we wouldn't have protocols, we'd have API's".
>
> >Probably.
>
> And that would be a *bad* thing, as far as computing progress
> is concerned.
Perhaps. Such "what if's" are an exercise in futility.
Andy Newman
>> In addition, the modifications to the DCE/RPC security
>> system that MS made (to use NTLMv1, NTLMv2) need to be
>> published. Yes I know Luke in the Samba Team has
>> reverse engineered many of these, but that's not the
>> point.
>
>understand the base protocols.
The adding of extensions is the main complaint people have. By not
publishing their interfaces Microsoft are protecting themselves
against potential competition which cements their dominant position
in the market. Now of course this is their right and it has worked
extremely well for them (full marks to MS for doing it where others
messed about and fell over their own feet) but it leads to problems
in the market place by removing competition and a great deal of choice.
I'll leave it to others to discuss why having a free market is good.
>> MS should publish the IDL for these protocols, and the
>> modifications made to DCE/RPC to support the Microsoft
>> proprietary security protocols.
>
>IDL is not a "protocol", well, only in the most nit-picky universe it is.
>It's a data format. If you start calling all data formats protocols, then
>file formats are protocols.
He's not saying IDL is a protocol at all. He's saying that MS should
publish their interfaces, defined via IDL. So what if they use a
published RPC mechanism? It's only a method of getting the application
protocol over the wire. It's the application protocols that are needed.
Forgive me if I'm making a mistake here (I'm not actively online at
present [time of typing] and can't get at MSDN) but do MS publish
the specs. for, say, talking to the various NT admin tools that can
work remotely? Can a competitor write a replacement for the supplied
NT tools and make them do the same things as the MS ones? This is an
honest question.
And, BTW yes, file formats *are* protocols. It's just some formats,
such as structured storage or old PDF, aren't too suitable for use in
environments where communications "costs" a lot more than conventional
disk accesses. E.g., formats that require repositioning the read/write
location aren't efficient over the wire (time vs. space problem, you can
either buffer lots, sometimes arbitrary amounts, of data or suffer the
latency and transmission costs of sending stuff again). But you can use
these "protocols" effectively "over the bus to the disk".
>I see nothing wrong with Microsoft adding extensions. Everyone in the
>industry does it. Sun does. HP does. IBM does. And often those
>extensions are considered trade secrets.
True, but when the company dominates the market as much as MS do there
is some obligation, for the benefit of a competitive market, to publish
the interfaces. They made IBM do it in the mainframe world and now its
Microsoft's turn.
IMHO the whole anti-trust thing could be resolved if MS published the
interfaces they use - protocols, APIs, whatever - allowing others to,
for instance, produce a completely compatible replacement for Internet
Explorer that does all the things that IE does in the system. But the
i/f's aren't available and reverse engineering them is (a) a non-
trivial problem, and, (b) potentially illegal with the raft of changes
to IP law being made around the world. One problem with this is the
embarrasment level for MS in describing some of their designs to the
world. Some of the "engineering" in those wonderfully marketed products
is not too wonderful (on the other hand some of it is and MS seem to
be getting better but I don't trust them not to do something either
stupid or purely designed to protect their business rather than solve
a problem correctly).
--
Chuck Berry lied about the promised land
Ultar Dragon
> without any operating system installed.
> This will give a customer choice of any OS, or if someone aleady have
> Win on desktop, why he/she have to pay to M$ an additional fee for OS
> on laptop?
>
> Zalek
>
That's a great idea. I wonder what that would do to the price of
Windows. I just noticed that the Winows 98 full version (not an
upgrade) cost just short of $200 at Compusa. That is quite ridiculous.
Just imagine how many copies of Windows 98 that MS is selling. They are
selling it on a new computer for roughly one quarter of that or less.
The true price of Windows 98 to a buyer of a new computer is probably
about 30-50$. Why should I pay $200 for the full program or $90 for the
upgrade when someone who buys a new computer gets it for next to
nothing.
The way I see it, a $200 retail price for Win98 is a prime example of
profiterring by Microsoft. It's not worth it and if people actually
boutght it at that price, they would make nothing short of a killing.
BB
Ted
their business. If you don't care to pay the price, load LINUX, or FreeBSD.
Get the BeOS, get OS/2. Get a MAC. If a company has a product to sell, the
goal is to maximize profit.
"Ultar Dragon" <ul...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:8c74qc$nui$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
Christopher Browne
>It's a free market dude. If Microsoft wants to charge $1000.00/copy, it's
>their business. If you don't care to pay the price, load LINUX, or FreeBSD.
>Get the BeOS, get OS/2. Get a MAC. If a company has a product to sell, the
>goal is to maximize profit.
a) No, it's *not* a "free market."
It's a market that has quite a number of rules.
--> Taxes payable.
--> Rejection of *various* forms of discrimination.
For instance, if Microsoft decided to charge people with white
skin $100 for a license, and charged people with black skin $200
for that license, this would be considered Rather Improper, and
charges *would* be laid.
b) The goal is *not* necessarily to "maximize profit."
People don't run for US President because of the high salary; they
do so for a variety of motivations that likely include:
- Desire for power
- Desire for prestige
- Desire for fame
- Unlikely, but possibly even *to help people.*
Microsoft's actions over the last number of years are consistent with
the primary goal being a *desire for power* rather than simply to
"maximize profit."
The fact that they spent money on "giving away" Internet Exploder is a
good example of this.
The fact that Bill Gates has been spending millions of dollars
establishing charitable foundations is consistent with a desire for
prestige far moreso than to "maximize profit." The interesting
conjunction of the timing of the charitable activities with the DOJ
proceedings is consistent with "desire for power" moreso than "to help
people."
--
Let me control a planet's oxygen supply and I don't care who makes the
laws.
cbbr...@ntlug.org - - <http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>
fmc
"Christopher Browne" <cbbr...@knuth.brownes.org> wrote
> For instance, if Microsoft decided to charge people with white
> skin $100 for a license, and charged people with black skin $200
> for that license, this would be considered Rather Improper, and
> charges *would* be laid.
You'd think that was the case, the way the government is acting.
> People don't run for US President because of the high salary; they
> do so for a variety of motivations that likely include:
> - Desire for power
> - Desire for prestige
> - Desire for fame
> - Unlikely, but possibly even *to help people.*
>
> Microsoft's actions over the last number of years are consistent with
> the primary goal being a *desire for power* rather than simply to
> "maximize profit."
>
> The fact that they spent money on "giving away" Internet Exploder is a
> good example of this.
Or it may be a good example of how they tried *to help people.* After all,
free software is supposed to be *a good thing*. Also, how much did the
government *help people* whose 401Ks took a hit yesterday? Are they going
to be made whole from the fines that will be levied, or will those monies go
directly into the U.S. Treasury?
>
> The fact that Bill Gates has been spending millions of dollars
> establishing charitable foundations is consistent with a desire for
> prestige far moreso than to "maximize profit." The interesting
> conjunction of the timing of the charitable activities with the DOJ
> proceedings is consistent with "desire for power" moreso than "to help
> people."
After all, redistributing wealth to establish power should be reserved to
the government, right? And since you brought up the subject, how much money
has the Linux community given to charities for ANY reason?
fmc
R.E.Ballard
"Erik Funkenbusch" <er...@visi.com> wrote:
> R.E.Ballard ( Rex Ballard ) <r.e.b...@usa.net> wrote in message
> news:8c39ki$phj$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> > In article <jiwE4.804$75.1...@ptah.visi.com>,
> > "Erik Funkenbusch" <er...@visi.com> wrote:
> > > R.E.Ballard ( Rex Ballard ) <r.e.b...@usa.net> wrote in
message
> > > news:8bt8jj$2vv$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> > > > > IE does *NOT* ship with viewers for powerpoint,
> > > > > word, or excel. You need to download those seperately.
Correct. The viewer interface is downloaded post-install.
Splitting hairs. Yes - my information was partially accurate,
but you are correct that Microsoft didn't "ship" the Office
document Viewers (the interfaces) - but rather used IE and
the preinstalled DLLs to "leverage" the downloads - using
free downloads of the final interfaces which were a fraction
of the size they would have been if Microsoft hadn't stacked
the deck in it's favor.
> > > > > And which protocols might those be?
> > > > > There aren't many of them.
> > > >
> > > > TCP/IP, IP, DNS, HTTP, HTML, MIME, TCP/IP over PPP, Frame
Relay,
> > and
> > > > ATM, arp, smtp, nntp, snmp - in all over 3000 RFCs covering
> > everything
> > > > from the IP address to multimedia.
> > >
> > > No, which PROPRIETARY protocols from MS would that be?
ActiveX, MS-CHAP, originally SMB, originally Lan Manager,
originally DHCP, and currently they are pushing for the
inclusion of OLE objects within XML.
Lets not forget their proprietary enhancements to Java, Front Page
Extensions, and VBScript.
Then there is DVD-CSS and USB PnP protocols. Also the PCI PnP
protocols and handshakes.
> > Protocols and File formats which are sent across Internet links.
> > These would include MSWord documents, Excel Spreadsheets,
Powerpoint
> > Presentations, and anything else capable of passing an executable
> > OLE/COM object embedded within the document.
>
> So now it's protocols AND file formats.
When you transfer a document across a network, especially the
internet, it effectively becomes a protocol. The distinction
is that you would normally be able to access the document from
any server platform using any client platform. Microsoft's
proprietary protocols are designed to support ONLY Microsoft Windows,
and are sometimes even designed to favor NT.
> I'll ask again. which *PROTOCOLS* are proprietary only to
micorosoft?
>
> File formats are not protocols.
> And Microsoft itself publishes the specs to
> it's file formats.
To which standards bodies, and without any restrictions
in terms of nondisclosures.
I realize that Microsoft publishes many of it's standards
to MSDN, but protects this information from Linux developers
with nondisclosure agreements.
> I know of very few that are MS proprietary.
> Consider that many of those
> protocols were co-developed with other vendors.
True. In some cases, Microsoft even approached standards groups
and asked all members to sign nondisclosure agreements before they
would agree to participate (USB, DVD, XML).
> > Again, in a competitive Market, customers wouldn't tolerate the
> > passing of "black wire" - binaries that cannot be audited for
> > the nature of the content. Even encrypted content can be audited
> > once it is decrypted.
>
> Oh really? You're assuming that most people care.
> They don't. The ones that do would not accept it, true.
> But that is a small minority.
But if the system administrators accountable for security
were to block access to the proprietary technology, users
would have to stop e-mailing explore-zip loaded documents
because the message wouldn't be allowed to sneak through.
As a result, you would have to send an open standards document,
either RTF, HTML, XML, or line-feed delimited ASCII text.
> Trust me, if MS's customers started to care about these things,
> MS would bend over backwards to meet their needs.
Publishers were aware that they had to stick with Kosher HTML,
but Microsoft attempted to demand that they include ActiveX controls,
FrontPage Extensions, and VBScript on their pages - knowing that
this content would not be processed by IETF compatible browsers
including Netscape, Hot Java, Mosaic, Arena, and Cello/Viola.
Even when the corporate market pushed back and insisted on using
Netscape (replacing IE post-install), Microsoft still tried to force
other ISPs to keep using the proprietary protocols/file formats.
> Microsoft knows how fickle the customer is.
Microsoft really doesn't care. Microsoft's primary customer is
the OEM. The customer must accept the preinstalled software as
part of the total "package". When PC customers staged a campaign
to get their money back for Windows software they weren't using,
Microsoft not only refused to give refunds, they also forbid the
OEMs from giving refunds.
Even when applications such as Partition Magic, Boot Magic, and
Linux are selling in the millions - Microsoft has demanded that
the OEMs make no alteration of the boot sequence from power-up
to final display of the desktop.
> > > > One of the reasons ARPA formed what is now the IETF in the
first
> > > > place was to prevent the unfiltered proliferation of executible
> > > > binaries across the internet.
> > >
> > > Funny, I thought it was formed
> > > to promote open protocol standards.
It was. The reasons for promoting open standards are described
above.
> > Actually it was both. The primary concern of ArpaNet was that
> > if they couldn't control the protocols, that people would be
> > sending messages designed to damage the system. One of the big
> > contriversies was the TN3270 protocol. Eventually, the issue
> > was resolved with the implementation of TN3270 under the BSD
license.
>
> The Tao of IETF mentions nothing about binaries.
Read archives of net.protocols (the 1984 version of
what is now comp.arch.dcom.protocols). This archive
discusses why ARPA should encourage the publication
and proliferation of open standards.
The military was worried that the students of USENET
(previously a UUCP network) would start pushing
binaries that would be downloaded and executed.
In 1988 standards had been relaxed, and the "Internet Worm"
virus knocked out thousands of computers concurrently in
a matter of less than an hour.
As a result of the Internet Worm, the internet administrators,
especially Henry Spencer, worked much more vigorously to end
the distribution of binaries and executables.
> I can also find no reference whatsoever to the
> prevention of binaries being a primary reason
> for the formation of the IETF.
You need to find documents that predate searchable usenet
archives. - Much of the debate was covered on Byte (BIX),
Datamation, and NetWorld.
> So, are you lying again?
As usual you are operating from a base of information that
goes no further back than 1994-1995. My base of information
on this topic goes back another 10 years.
> Why doesn't the documentation support your assertion?
>
> > The real issue, for the purposes
> > of a DOJ settlement, is that Microsoft
> > uses it's file formats, whether stored on files, or passed across
> > the internet, to protect it's Application Barrier to Entry.
>
> Then why does Microsoft publish those
> formats (in fact, they've published
> them since the beginning of the MSDN).
The very first step in joining MSDN is to "sign" (click) a license
agreement which includes a comprehensive nondisclosure agreement
which restricts what you can publish, what you can do with the
information, and what you must do to get Microsoft's permission
to use the information.
Novell once asked me to sign an agreement which would have given
them control over my ability to discuss TCP/IP. Since I had spent
6 years doing TCP/IP development, I refused to sign, I told my
employer that I wouldn't sign the agreement. Eventually we went
back to Novell and negotiated a much less restrictive agreement.
When I was asked to sign the MSDN agreement, I found that there
were numerous terms which I could not accept (because they would
have limited my ability to support UNIX and Linux). To this day,
I work with people who have signed the MSDN agreements, but I have
not signed the agreement.
> > In the competitive IT markets such as UNIX, most vendors conform
> > to open and published standards. Microsoft refuses to conform
> > to these standards.
>
> Strange that Windows 2000 has more
> standards compliance than ever before then.
True. But then again, this is a comparison based on previous
versions of Microsoft Operating Systems. Compared to Linux
or UNIX, Microsoft is still very proprietary.
Windows 2000 supports Posix level 1, but not Posix Level 3.
Microsoft still refuses to support X11 (Linux distributors
are now including complementary X11 servers). Microsoft
still refuses to support NFS. They have chosen to do their
own "Active Directory" instead of X.509/LDAP. They have
chosen to promote VBScript instead of PERL. They have
chosen to stick with IIS instead of supporting Apache.
They have jazzed up IDE ever since it hit the 512 megabyte
limit with kludges like larger clusters, LBA, and Fat32,
and have ressisted migration to SCSI.
Microsoft has been twisting standards for twenty years,
starting with the insertion of carriage returns in line-feed
dilimited text.
> Given that, as you say "Microsoft refuses to conform to these
> standards".
> How can it be that Microsofts security model is based on
> Kerberos, a publishes standard.
Is it Kerberos or "Based on Kerboros". MS-CHAP is "based on CHAP",
but was forced onto all ISPs who wanted to use NT as a terminal
server (AOL, Compuserve, Prodigy...). MS-CHAP prevented the use
of Trumpet Winsock, Linux, or KA9Q TCP/IP - even though these
stacks had been instrumental in the adoption of TCP/IP.
In some cases, Microsoft has introduced a standard with the
intent of driving out competitors. Once the competitors are
driven out of the market almost entirely, Microsoft will publish
the standards.
> How can it be that Microsoft worked closely
> with the standards body to extend Kerberos
> in a standards compliant way.
Whe have discussed Microsoft's "Embrace and Extend" tactics
for years on this group (and in numerous other groups).
They agree to adopt a standard, then they join the standards
body, then they get the standards body to endorse the ability
to add proprietary extensions, then they introduce proprietary
and undocumented extensions that destroy the very compatibility
that the standards body was chartered to create. Remember,
most of these standards bodies had originally been formed to
make it possible to have common standards that could be shared
by UNIX, MS-DOS, MS-Windows, MAC, VMS, MVS, and VM/CMS, along
with numerous other operating systems. Microsoft has tried
to subvert this interoperability - making the "standard" useless
to anything other than Microsoft Windows variants.
> (And don't bring up the issue about
> not-documenting the data format of the
> extension fields. Nothing in the standard
> requires that they do so, it's
> merely a good will gesture).
Not originally! This is the very issue. It took Microsoft
several years to get the Kerboros group to accept the
concept of proprietary extensions. Again, Microsoft's
extensions completely destroy the compatibility that the
original standards body was originally chartered to create.
> > Microsoft must provide sufficient detail of the protocols and
> > file formats to facilitate GPL reference implementations, and
> > under the terms of the GPL - - especially if they want to
> > put that format across the internet.
>
> Which protocols fall under the GPL
> liscense that Microsoft is using?
Most of your internet protocols are implemented in reference
implementations written and supported under Open Source
Licenses. The original Mosaic license was very similar to
GPL, the original HTTP server was also similar to GPL. Mosiac
traces it's origins back to Viola, which was GPL, and Lynx,
which is BSDL.
> And why "must" they do so?
I'm suggesting that this should be a requirement of any out
of court settlement. The whole point of this exercise was
to prevent Microsoft from excluding competitors in either
the Applications arena, or the Operating Systems arena.
> > Again, the goal here is to create a
> > competitive environment in the PC
> > market that is as competitive as the current UNIX market, where
> > Microsoft may be the dominant player, but is no longer a monopoly.
>
> Haven't you heard? Judge Jackson says
> that the Unix market is not the same
> as Microsofts market, and that Linux
> and others are not considered
> competition.
Specifically, Microsoft's Monopoly is over the desktop operating
systems market. Microsoft is a minor competitor in the server
market and has no monopoly in that market, but uses it's monopoly
over the desktop to attempt to manipulate the server market.
The fundamental issue is that Microsoft used it's control of the
operating system used by 95% of all PC users to drive competitors
out of the marketplace. Now Microsoft controls what applications
are installed, what user interfaces. This control of the applications
then forces to use Windows. Microsoft even found that this was
a problem when it released NT 3.5 and Windows NT 4.0
> > Once the competitive market is achieved,
> > Microsoft can do whatever it
> > wants. If customers would really rather pay $600 for an Office
> > Suite made by Microsoft for the $400 Operating System made by
> > Microsoft, in a competitive market (because it's easier
> > to Learn and Use), it doesn't mean that those who want the $100
> > Office Suite for the $40 Operating System will automatically be
> > excluded from all corporate communication and economic opportunity.
>
> So your answer is to require Microsoft
> to play by the same rules as Unix,
Yep
> which has hampered the development
> of Unix for the last 20+ years.
Actually, Microsoft has hampered the development of UNIX
desktop applications. In many cases this includes contracts
with companies like SCO and Novell which prevented them from
entering the desktop market.
Keep in mind that SCO had an integrated Office Suite (Open Desktop)
nearly 3 years before Microsoft released Microsoft Office.
Furthermore, Dell originally offered SCO UNIX on all of it's PC
platforms until Microsoft gave Dell a "choice" of Microsoft everywhere,
or Microsoft nowhere.
Ironically, you perceive UNIX as being a failure. Ironically it was
the choice of the Linux and UNIX community to encourage the use of
Web Browser interface rather than force users to switch to Linux
or UNIX to access the internet.
LYNX was written for UNIX. Viola was written for UNIX back in
1992. Cello was a port of Viola to Windows intended to make it
easier to let users have the option of switching from Windows to
Linux or UNIX. The servers were originally all UNIX.
The success of the internet is almost entirely due to UNIX. Microsoft
didn't even have the Internet on the radar screen until after
UNIX had built up a market 10 times larger than any other "Windows
Only" service.
> That's stupid.
> The Unix market has been fragmented for years and took the creation
> of bodies like Posix to make it even mildly interoperative.
Microsoft and Mainframe people advocating proprietary technology
love to make a huge deal of the "fragmentation" of UNIX. In
reality, 90-95% of the system was compatible - for example BSD
ran nearly all Version 7 applications. System III was AT&T's
attempt at a fully proprietary version of UNIX that totally
bombed. When SysV included the ability to run nearly all BSD
applications, it was much more widely accepted.
When Sun jumped the gun and claimed that they would be the
exclusive licensee of UNIX, the OSF was formed to implement
an alternative kernel. One of the key goals was that the
OSF kernel had to run all BSD and SysV applications.
> The IETF was
> created because of Unix's fragmentation,
> not because of Microsoft.
Actually, the IETF was created to prevent companies like IBM,
Novell, and DEC from trying to take control of the network
with their proprietary protocols. In 1988, many venders were
giving TCP/IP lip service, but would covertly try to push
their proprietary protocols. For example, Dec supported TCP/IP,
but once a few vaxen were installed, they would push the VMS
administrator to use DecNet instead - in some cases critical
functions wouldn't run without DecNet. In some cases,
we even found that people were using bridges across WANs
and causing routing loops because the administrators didn't
realize that the routers and the bridges were clobbering each other.
> > The key is that if Microsoft tries to return to "Black Files and
> > Black Wires" in an environment where 60% of the market is using
> > Open Standards and Open Source based products, Microsoft users
> > would have a very hard time having that proprietary content
> > accepted by Managers, coworkers, clients, customers, and vendors.
>
> 60% of the market?
60 percent of the server market. My mistake. I should have been
much clearer.
> Wow. Where did you pull that figure from?
> The DOJ says Microsoft has 90% of the market.
Microsoft has 90%, perhaps even 95% of the Intel
based Desktop Operating system market. One pundit
quoted 95% and Microsoft tried to claim that Linux had
10% of the market. The Judge gave Microsoft the benefit
of the doubt on that point. When asked however, Microsoft
was unwilling to provide a basis for their claim that Linux
had 10%. That 10% was appearantly based on the total number
of UNIX and Linux users identified at MSN, MSNBC, and Microsoft.com,
divided by the number of copies of Windows 95 sold in that year.
Unfortunately, Microsoft has never provided the basis for their
claim - the DOJ didn't object or demand proof, therefore the Judge
had to accept the possibility that Linux had 10% of the market.
It may have been that Netscape was afraid that Microsoft might
have been able to generate that proof.
david parsons
fmc <f...@mediaone.net> wrote:
>Or it may be a good example of how they tried *to help people.* After all,
>free software is supposed to be *a good thing*. Also, how much did the
>government *help people* whose 401Ks took a hit yesterday?
I suspect if you look at almost[1] any stock offering[2] out there,
and if you look at the fine print of almost[1] any brokerage
agreement[2] you will make, you'll see a comment along the lines of
``stock is volatile and there are no guarantees of any sort of
profit when you invest in it.'' It's may be a shame that a lot of
people have lost imaginary money when some big investors panicked
and dumped their MS stock, but as a general rule the US government
is not in the business of ensuring that stock investments will
always increase in value over time (if they were, there's a small
matter of the drop in RH stock value, and I'd like to know where to
make the claim for compensation because the stock didn't stay at
US$300/share.)
MS broke the law, and your investment in MS is not immunized from
suffering the consequences of Microsoft's (stupid, from an economic
point of view) abuse of their monopoly status.
____
david parsons \bi/ Gee, their stock is down to what it was in, when,
\/ August 1999?
[1: I'm sure fly-by-night slime don't bother to warn you about the
volatility of the worthless paper they're shilling.]
[2: In the US, at least; it's possible that there are bourses in
out of the way corners of the world where the local regulations
allow outright fraud.]
Erik Funkenbusch
> > So, in other words.
> > You lied when you said that Microsoft shipped them with IE.
>
> Splitting hairs. Yes - my information was partially accurate,
> but you are correct that Microsoft didn't "ship" the Office
> document Viewers (the interfaces) - but rather used IE and
> the preinstalled DLLs to "leverage" the downloads - using
> free downloads of the final interfaces which were a fraction
> of the size they would have been if Microsoft hadn't stacked
> the deck in it's favor.
So in other words, you state as fact things which you are not sure of and
pull out of the blue.
If Microsoft ships the majority of Office in IE, and requires only a small
download of "a fraction of the size", then why is Office shipped on a CD and
takes about 30 minutes to install even on an above average PC? Why does it
still take 10's or 100's of megabytes? Even better, how is it that
Microsoft is able to ship Office nearly a year after IE ships and still have
all that functionality in IE instead?
> > > > No, which PROPRIETARY protocols from MS would that be?
>
> ActiveX, MS-CHAP, originally SMB, originally Lan Manager,
> originally DHCP, and currently they are pushing for the
> inclusion of OLE objects within XML.
ActiveX is entirely documented by the Open Group (the same body that
documents the X standard).
MS-CHAP i'll grant you on, though I believe it's published. "originally" is
meaningless. We're talking about Microsofts standards today.
> Lets not forget their proprietary enhancements to Java, Front Page
> Extensions, and VBScript.
Front Page extensions are extensions to the server to allow Front Page to
manage the HTTP tree. It's an application tool, not an OS one.
VBScript? How can you mouth criticism about MS's Java implementation on one
side and then talk about how VBScript is proprietary in the other. Both are
just as proprietary (Sun's Java or MS's VBScript). Though MS's scripting
engine allows the inclusion of any scripting language you like, and many
exist, including Rexx and Python plug-ins.
> Then there is DVD-CSS and USB PnP protocols. Also the PCI PnP
> protocols and handshakes.
You have never proven one word that Microsoft has been instrumental in any
of those activities.
> When you transfer a document across a network, especially the
> internet, it effectively becomes a protocol. The distinction
> is that you would normally be able to access the document from
> any server platform using any client platform. Microsoft's
> proprietary protocols are designed to support ONLY Microsoft Windows,
> and are sometimes even designed to favor NT.
That must be why there are implementations of DCOM and COM for Solaris and
HP/UX.
> > I'll ask again. which *PROTOCOLS* are proprietary only to
> micorosoft?
> >
> > File formats are not protocols.
> > And Microsoft itself publishes the specs to
> > it's file formats.
>
> To which standards bodies, and without any restrictions
> in terms of nondisclosures.
>
> I realize that Microsoft publishes many of it's standards
> to MSDN, but protects this information from Linux developers
> with nondisclosure agreements.
No, there are no such protections and no such non-disclosures.
> > I know of very few that are MS proprietary.
> > Consider that many of those
> > protocols were co-developed with other vendors.
>
> True. In some cases, Microsoft even approached standards groups
> and asked all members to sign nondisclosure agreements before they
> would agree to participate (USB, DVD, XML).
And your proof of this is what?
> > Oh really? You're assuming that most people care.
> > They don't. The ones that do would not accept it, true.
> > But that is a small minority.
>
> But if the system administrators accountable for security
> were to block access to the proprietary technology, users
> would have to stop e-mailing explore-zip loaded documents
> because the message wouldn't be allowed to sneak through.
>
> As a result, you would have to send an open standards document,
> either RTF, HTML, XML, or line-feed delimited ASCII text.
No, most likely the system administrator would be out of a job, since the
users WANT to be able to do those things, and CEO's and Presidents are
users.
> > Trust me, if MS's customers started to care about these things,
> > MS would bend over backwards to meet their needs.
>
> Publishers were aware that they had to stick with Kosher HTML,
> but Microsoft attempted to demand that they include ActiveX controls,
> FrontPage Extensions, and VBScript on their pages - knowing that
> this content would not be processed by IETF compatible browsers
> including Netscape, Hot Java, Mosaic, Arena, and Cello/Viola.
There's no such thing as a front page extension to HTML. Front Page
extensions are server only and are used for maintenance, not for display of
HTML. More holes in your knowledge and more of you fabricating details to
suit your needs.
Tell me, how does Microsoft "demand" that web pages contain ActiveX?
> Even when the corporate market pushed back and insisted on using
> Netscape (replacing IE post-install), Microsoft still tried to force
> other ISPs to keep using the proprietary protocols/file formats.
Example?
> > Microsoft knows how fickle the customer is.
>
> Microsoft really doesn't care. Microsoft's primary customer is
> the OEM. The customer must accept the preinstalled software as
> part of the total "package". When PC customers staged a campaign
> to get their money back for Windows software they weren't using,
> Microsoft not only refused to give refunds, they also forbid the
> OEMs from giving refunds.
The customer buys what they want, and what they want is Windows. Thus the
OEM must buy Windows. Microsoft is dependant upon customer wants any way
you look at it.
> Even when applications such as Partition Magic, Boot Magic, and
> Linux are selling in the millions - Microsoft has demanded that
> the OEMs make no alteration of the boot sequence from power-up
> to final display of the desktop.
Partition Magic is used to resize partitions, for instance to resize your
NTFS partition to make room for your FAT32 partition so you can play the
latest game on your NT system by dual booting to Windows 98. That's where
the VAST majority of those sales go, not to alternate OS's. Especially when
you consider that things like fips exist for free on those platforms.
> > The Tao of IETF mentions nothing about binaries.
>
> Read archives of net.protocols (the 1984 version of
> what is now comp.arch.dcom.protocols). This archive
> discusses why ARPA should encourage the publication
> and proliferation of open standards.
Ahh.. so even the IETF's own documentation cannot be relied upon to back up
your claims. Very credible.
> > Then why does Microsoft publish those
> > formats (in fact, they've published
> > them since the beginning of the MSDN).
>
> The very first step in joining MSDN is to "sign" (click) a license
> agreement which includes a comprehensive nondisclosure agreement
> which restricts what you can publish, what you can do with the
> information, and what you must do to get Microsoft's permission
> to use the information.
No, it does not. I just verified this myself, since I installed a new clean
machine just yesterday. I connected to http://msdn.microsoft.com then
clicked on the MSDN Library link and was brought directly to it without
having to agree to anything. The information is simply freely available.
As a test, I just tried my RedHat 6 install, using Netscape 4.51 I did the
same thing. Seems like the information isn't hidden to Linux users either.
I have also never agreed to any kind of NDA when installing the MSDN, and I
have read the EULA's (not every time, but I occasionally look to make sure
nothing serious has changed).
> When I was asked to sign the MSDN agreement, I found that there
> were numerous terms which I could not accept (because they would
> have limited my ability to support UNIX and Linux). To this day,
> I work with people who have signed the MSDN agreements, but I have
> not signed the agreement.
Perhaps you can state the actual language you disagree with.
> > Strange that Windows 2000 has more
> > standards compliance than ever before then.
>
> True. But then again, this is a comparison based on previous
> versions of Microsoft Operating Systems. Compared to Linux
> or UNIX, Microsoft is still very proprietary.
No, your statement (which you conviently snipped) was "Microsoft refuses to
conform to these standards". That's not an indication of anything that
happened in the past. "resuses" is a present tense form of the word,
indicating that you are saying they still refuse. Now you're backpeddling
again and stating "oh, that was in the past".
> Windows 2000 supports Posix level 1, but not Posix Level 3.
If Posix level 3 were important, I'm sure MS would support it. It's
available in a variety of 3rd party add ons.
> Microsoft still refuses to support X11 (Linux distributors
> are now including complementary X11 servers).
X11 is an entirely different GUI than Windows has. "complementary" is a bit
of an exageration. XFree86 is free for anyone and there is no other
widespread GUI available for Linux.
> Microsoft still refuses to support NFS.
NFS is a Sun proprietary protocol.
> They have chosen to do their
> own "Active Directory" instead of X.509/LDAP.
Which is LDAP compliant.
> They have
> chosen to promote VBScript instead of PERL.
I wasn't aware that PERL was an international standard. Even so, they
promote *ANY* scripting language you can plug in to the Windows Scripting
Host, which includes PERL.
> They have
> chosen to stick with IIS instead of supporting Apache.
Apache isn't an international standard either.
> They have jazzed up IDE ever since it hit the 512 megabyte
> limit with kludges like larger clusters, LBA, and Fat32,
> and have ressisted migration to SCSI.
Are you on crack? IDE is promoted by the drive industry and the PC
industry, not Microsoft. SCSI is much easier to support than IDE, What
would MS have to gain from this?
On top of that, MS pushes SCSI solutions for the high end quite a bit. You
can only do many of the high end features of NTFS on SCSI.
> Microsoft has been twisting standards for twenty years,
> starting with the insertion of carriage returns in line-feed
> dilimited text.
I believe CP/M did that first. Blame Digital Research for that one.
> > Given that, as you say "Microsoft refuses to conform to these
> > standards".
> > How can it be that Microsofts security model is based on
> > Kerberos, a publishes standard.
>
> Is it Kerberos or "Based on Kerboros".
It's completely standards conforming Kerberos.
> MS-CHAP is "based on CHAP",
Inded it was.
> but was forced onto all ISPs who wanted to use NT as a terminal
> server (AOL, Compuserve, Prodigy...). MS-CHAP prevented the use
> of Trumpet Winsock, Linux, or KA9Q TCP/IP - even though these
> stacks had been instrumental in the adoption of TCP/IP.
CHAP was hardly necessary, nor did it preclude the useage of those stacks,
since MS-CHAP could be turned off.
> In some cases, Microsoft has introduced a standard with the
> intent of driving out competitors. Once the competitors are
> driven out of the market almost entirely, Microsoft will publish
> the standards.
Which "standard" did Microsoft introduce, but not document?
> > How can it be that Microsoft worked closely
> > with the standards body to extend Kerberos
> > in a standards compliant way.
>
> Whe have discussed Microsoft's "Embrace and Extend" tactics
> for years on this group (and in numerous other groups).
> They agree to adopt a standard, then they join the standards
> body, then they get the standards body to endorse the ability
> to add proprietary extensions, then they introduce proprietary
> and undocumented extensions that destroy the very compatibility
> that the standards body was chartered to create.
The whole purpose of a standards body is to have a body of people that agree
on the implementation. If Microsoft convinces them to agree to something,
then that *IS* the standards process. That's how it works. That's how any
standard is formed. People in a group lobby each other to support each
others proprietary features. It's worked that way since before Microsoft
was a company.
> Remember,
> most of these standards bodies had originally been formed to
> make it possible to have common standards that could be shared
> by UNIX, MS-DOS, MS-Windows, MAC, VMS, MVS, and VM/CMS, along
> with numerous other operating systems. Microsoft has tried
> to subvert this interoperability - making the "standard" useless
> to anything other than Microsoft Windows variants.
You keep saying "tried". I "tried" to bend bars with my bare hands as well.
> > (And don't bring up the issue about
> > not-documenting the data format of the
> > extension fields. Nothing in the standard
> > requires that they do so, it's
> > merely a good will gesture).
>
> Not originally! This is the very issue. It took Microsoft
> several years to get the Kerboros group to accept the
> concept of proprietary extensions. Again, Microsoft's
> extensions completely destroy the compatibility that the
> original standards body was originally chartered to create.
But the standards group DID work with them. Your beef seems to be with the
standards bodies, not with Microsoft.
> > Which protocols fall under the GPL
> > liscense that Microsoft is using?
>
> Most of your internet protocols are implemented in reference
> implementations written and supported under Open Source
> Licenses. The original Mosaic license was very similar to
> GPL, the original HTTP server was also similar to GPL. Mosiac
> traces it's origins back to Viola, which was GPL, and Lynx,
> which is BSDL.
So Mosaic and Lynx were violations of the GPL? Is that what you're saying?
> > Haven't you heard? Judge Jackson says
> > that the Unix market is not the same
> > as Microsofts market, and that Linux
> > and others are not considered
> > competition.
>
> Specifically, Microsoft's Monopoly is over the desktop operating
> systems market. Microsoft is a minor competitor in the server
> market and has no monopoly in that market, but uses it's monopoly
> over the desktop to attempt to manipulate the server market.
And according to you, not succeeding.
> The fundamental issue is that Microsoft used it's control of the
> operating system used by 95% of all PC users to drive competitors
> out of the marketplace. Now Microsoft controls what applications
> are installed, what user interfaces. This control of the applications
> then forces to use Windows. Microsoft even found that this was
> a problem when it released NT 3.5 and Windows NT 4.0
Microsoft has always controlled what interface was on their Windows
Machines.
> > So your answer is to require Microsoft
> > to play by the same rules as Unix,
> Yep
>
> > which has hampered the development
> > of Unix for the last 20+ years.
>
> Actually, Microsoft has hampered the development of UNIX
> desktop applications. In many cases this includes contracts
> with companies like SCO and Novell which prevented them from
> entering the desktop market.
And you're evidence is?
> Keep in mind that SCO had an integrated Office Suite (Open Desktop)
> nearly 3 years before Microsoft released Microsoft Office.
> Furthermore, Dell originally offered SCO UNIX on all of it's PC
> platforms until Microsoft gave Dell a "choice" of Microsoft everywhere,
> or Microsoft nowhere.
And your evidence is?
> Ironically, you perceive UNIX as being a failure. Ironically it was
> the choice of the Linux and UNIX community to encourage the use of
> Web Browser interface rather than force users to switch to Linux
> or UNIX to access the internet.
I don't perceive it as a failure. I preceive it as a fragmented universe
that takes 10x longer to get anything done than in a tightly controlled one.
> The success of the internet is almost entirely due to UNIX. Microsoft
> didn't even have the Internet on the radar screen until after
> UNIX had built up a market 10 times larger than any other "Windows
> Only" service.
The success of the internet as we know it today is most certainly due to
Unix, but it's also due to Microsoft, since without Microsofts support of
it, it would not be anything as ubiquitious as it is today.
> > That's stupid.
> > The Unix market has been fragmented for years and took the creation
> > of bodies like Posix to make it even mildly interoperative.
>
> Microsoft and Mainframe people advocating proprietary technology
> love to make a huge deal of the "fragmentation" of UNIX. In
> reality, 90-95% of the system was compatible - for example BSD
> ran nearly all Version 7 applications. System III was AT&T's
> attempt at a fully proprietary version of UNIX that totally
> bombed. When SysV included the ability to run nearly all BSD
> applications, it was much more widely accepted.
Wait a minute here. Aren't you the one complaining about how microsofts
minor extensions to standards is the evil of the universe, yet it's OK to
have proprietary versions of Unix OS's that can be as much as 10%
incompatible with other Unix OS's?
Do you have any consistency whatsoever?
> When Sun jumped the gun and claimed that they would be the
> exclusive licensee of UNIX, the OSF was formed to implement
> an alternative kernel. One of the key goals was that the
> OSF kernel had to run all BSD and SysV applications.
And OSF-1 is where today?
> > The IETF was
> > created because of Unix's fragmentation,
> > not because of Microsoft.
>
> Actually, the IETF was created to prevent companies like IBM,
> Novell, and DEC from trying to take control of the network
> with their proprietary protocols.
In other words... Unix's fragmentation.
> > > The key is that if Microsoft tries to return to "Black Files and
> > > Black Wires" in an environment where 60% of the market is using
> > > Open Standards and Open Source based products, Microsoft users
> > > would have a very hard time having that proprietary content
> > > accepted by Managers, coworkers, clients, customers, and vendors.
> >
> > 60% of the market?
>
> 60 percent of the server market. My mistake. I should have been
> much clearer.
>
> > Wow. Where did you pull that figure from?
>
> www.netcraft.com
Netcraft counts only domains, not servers and not installations. It doesn't
show any meaningful number in regards to this discussion.
you could have 10,000 domains on a single machine and that would be counted
as 10,000 installations of both Unix and Apache, when it's just one.
Leslie Mikesell
Erik Funkenbusch <er...@visi.com> wrote:
>> > > > No, which PROPRIETARY protocols from MS would that be?
>>
>> ActiveX, MS-CHAP, originally SMB, originally Lan Manager,
>> originally DHCP, and currently they are pushing for the
>> inclusion of OLE objects within XML.
>MS-CHAP i'll grant you on, though I believe it's published. "originally" is
>meaningless. We're talking about Microsofts standards today.
How do you get NT machines to authenticate against anything but
a Microsoft box as a domain controller? Is that a protocol?
Is it published? Which component can you replace to make
the client side co-exist with standard network authentication
methods?
>> I realize that Microsoft publishes many of it's standards
>> to MSDN, but protects this information from Linux developers
>> with nondisclosure agreements.
>
>No, there are no such protections and no such non-disclosures.
So where are the domain controller documents? And what is
really happening when IIS talking to IE pretends to be doing
HTTP but pops up an authentication window that has a
third box for 'domain' information? For some reason this
doesn't work when a standard http proxy gets between
the two. Why is that?
>There's no such thing as a front page extension to HTML. Front Page
>extensions are server only and are used for maintenance, not for display of
>HTML. More holes in your knowledge and more of you fabricating details to
>suit your needs.
WHAT??? You know very well that Front Page offers by default to
design animations and other things that can only be displayed
by the non-standard extensions in IE. Just like visual J++
creates java applets that won't work with anything but Microsoft
browsers. Are you going to claim that is accidental? That
Microsoft didn't realize that the average user would think
the other products were broken instead when they had in
fact been tricked into building non-standards-conforming
code by these tools?
>Tell me, how does Microsoft "demand" that web pages contain ActiveX?
Build something in FrontPage with animations. Build an applet with
with J++. Are you warned that the generated code is non-standard?
>The customer buys what they want, and what they want is Windows. Thus the
>OEM must buy Windows. Microsoft is dependant upon customer wants any way
>you look at it.
That is clearly not true when the customers ask for refunds for the
pre-installed gunk. Has Microsoft ever responded to these requests?
>X11 is an entirely different GUI than Windows has. "complementary" is a bit
>of an exageration. XFree86 is free for anyone and there is no other
>widespread GUI available for Linux.
>
>> Microsoft still refuses to support NFS.
>
>NFS is a Sun proprietary protocol.
Isn't the full spec released now?
>> They have chosen to do their
>> own "Active Directory" instead of X.509/LDAP.
>
>Which is LDAP compliant.
Does that mean you can now do your authentication against
a standard LDAP server? Or just that they pretend to
be a standard server?
>It's completely standards conforming Kerberos.
Does that mean you can use a standard Kerberos
server as your win2K domain controller? Or just
that they pretend to be a standard server?
>> MS-CHAP is "based on CHAP",
>
>Inded it was.
And broke everything that understood chap. As usual.
>> but was forced onto all ISPs who wanted to use NT as a terminal
>> server (AOL, Compuserve, Prodigy...). MS-CHAP prevented the use
>> of Trumpet Winsock, Linux, or KA9Q TCP/IP - even though these
>> stacks had been instrumental in the adoption of TCP/IP.
>
>CHAP was hardly necessary, nor did it preclude the useage of those stacks,
>since MS-CHAP could be turned off.
Really? Our cisco rep says that we can't run normal chap and ms-chap
both when authenticating dialins against a domain controller?
Why is that?
>> In some cases, Microsoft has introduced a standard with the
>> intent of driving out competitors. Once the competitors are
>> driven out of the market almost entirely, Microsoft will publish
>> the standards.
>
>Which "standard" did Microsoft introduce, but not document?
Domain controller authentication. How do we use another
type of authentication with NT/win2k clients?
>The success of the internet as we know it today is most certainly due to
>Unix, but it's also due to Microsoft, since without Microsofts support of
>it, it would not be anything as ubiquitious as it is today.
Huh? OS/2 released full internet support including a browser while
Mr. Gates was still proclaiming that windows would never include
a browser for free. And MSN was expected to be a proprietary
imitation of the internet. People have such short memories...
>Wait a minute here. Aren't you the one complaining about how microsofts
>minor extensions to standards is the evil of the universe, yet it's OK to
>have proprietary versions of Unix OS's that can be as much as 10%
>incompatible with other Unix OS's?
Of course - if you don't illegally use your monopoly status to force
your extensions on unwilling users, innovation is a good thing.
IBM was prevented from abusing people with one product because
they needed another, AT&T always was at a disadvantage marketing
unix because their monopoly status, and now it is time for
Microsoft to realize that they can't use their monopoly position
of one product to bundle other things in an anti-competitive way.
Les Mikesell
l...@mcs.com
Erik Funkenbusch
news:8cgj1a$1qbm$1...@Jupiter.mcs.net...
> >MS-CHAP i'll grant you on, though I believe it's published. "originally"
is
> >meaningless. We're talking about Microsofts standards today.
>
> How do you get NT machines to authenticate against anything but
> a Microsoft box as a domain controller? Is that a protocol?
> Is it published? Which component can you replace to make
> the client side co-exist with standard network authentication
> methods?
MS-CHAP is an auto configuring protocol for dial-ins, not a domain
controller authentication.
> >> I realize that Microsoft publishes many of it's standards
> >> to MSDN, but protects this information from Linux developers
> >> with nondisclosure agreements.
> >
> >No, there are no such protections and no such non-disclosures.
>
> So where are the domain controller documents? And what is
> really happening when IIS talking to IE pretends to be doing
> HTTP but pops up an authentication window that has a
> third box for 'domain' information? For some reason this
> doesn't work when a standard http proxy gets between
> the two. Why is that?
I really don't know, nor do I care.
> >There's no such thing as a front page extension to HTML. Front Page
> >extensions are server only and are used for maintenance, not for display
of
> >HTML. More holes in your knowledge and more of you fabricating details
to
> >suit your needs.
>
> WHAT??? You know very well that Front Page offers by default to
> design animations and other things that can only be displayed
> by the non-standard extensions in IE.
"offers"? Isn't that a bit of an exageration? In any case, if there is any
non-HTML4 compliant code generated by Frontpage that works in IE, it's an IE
extension, not a front page one.
> Just like visual J++
> creates java applets that won't work with anything but Microsoft
> browsers.
It *CAN* generate applets that do this. It most certainly can also generate
100% pure applets. More exageration.
> Are you going to claim that is accidental? That
> Microsoft didn't realize that the average user would think
> the other products were broken instead when they had in
> fact been tricked into building non-standards-conforming
> code by these tools?
Any programmer that doesn't understand the language he's using isn't a
programmer that should be trusted. It's his or her job to know what is and
isn't standard.
> >Tell me, how does Microsoft "demand" that web pages contain ActiveX?
>
> Build something in FrontPage with animations. Build an applet with
> with J++. Are you warned that the generated code is non-standard?
What does that have to do with Microsoft "demanding" ActiveX be contained in
web pages? Can you stick to the subject you are responding to?
> >The customer buys what they want, and what they want is Windows. Thus
the
> >OEM must buy Windows. Microsoft is dependant upon customer wants any way
> >you look at it.
>
> That is clearly not true when the customers ask for refunds for the
> pre-installed gunk. Has Microsoft ever responded to these requests?
OEM's take on all support options, including refunds in order to get cheaper
copies of Windows. Thus, Microsoft is not responsible for giving refunds on
OEM copies. The OEM is. Microsoft gives refunds on retail copies.
> >> Microsoft still refuses to support NFS.
> >
> >NFS is a Sun proprietary protocol.
>
> Isn't the full spec released now?
I don't think it's documented by Sun. I think it's documented by others.
> >> They have chosen to do their
> >> own "Active Directory" instead of X.509/LDAP.
> >
> >Which is LDAP compliant.
>
> Does that mean you can now do your authentication against
> a standard LDAP server? Or just that they pretend to
> be a standard server?
If you have an LDAP client, it can connect to ActiveDirectory. If you have
and LDAP server, ActiveDirectory clients can connect to that.
> >It's completely standards conforming Kerberos.
>
> Does that mean you can use a standard Kerberos
> server as your win2K domain controller? Or just
> that they pretend to be a standard server?
Kerberos has no concept of domain controllers. As such, how could a
Kerberos server do something for which it wasn't designed?
> >> MS-CHAP is "based on CHAP",
> >
> >Inded it was.
>
> And broke everything that understood chap. As usual.
And that was almost 10 years ago.
> >CHAP was hardly necessary, nor did it preclude the useage of those
stacks,
> >since MS-CHAP could be turned off.
>
> Really? Our cisco rep says that we can't run normal chap and ms-chap
> both when authenticating dialins against a domain controller?
> Why is that?
No, you can't. But the Microsoft client can understand regular CHAP as well
as MS-CHAP. There is no need to run both.
> >Which "standard" did Microsoft introduce, but not document?
>
> Domain controller authentication. How do we use another
> type of authentication with NT/win2k clients?
Since when did Microsoft introduce that as a standard?
> >The success of the internet as we know it today is most certainly due to
> >Unix, but it's also due to Microsoft, since without Microsofts support of
> >it, it would not be anything as ubiquitious as it is today.
>
> Huh? OS/2 released full internet support including a browser while
> Mr. Gates was still proclaiming that windows would never include
> a browser for free. And MSN was expected to be a proprietary
> imitation of the internet. People have such short memories...
Mr Gates never proclaimed any such thing that I recall. Do you have a link
to that?
MSN shipped at the same time as the free IE. So, what's your point?
Are you suggesting that OS/2 would have made the internet as ubiquitious as
it is today?
William Adderholdt
Erik Funkenbusch <er...@visi.com> wrote:
> R.E.Ballard ( Rex Ballard ) <r.e.b...@usa.net> wrote in message
> news:8ceo0k$2c$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> > When Sun jumped the gun and claimed that they would be the
> > exclusive licensee of UNIX, the OSF was formed to implement
> > an alternative kernel. One of the key goals was that the
> > OSF kernel had to run all BSD and SysV applications.
>
> And OSF-1 is where today?
Isn't the OSF kernel used in Tru64 Unix? (Just wondering.)
William Adderholdt
Leslie Mikesell
Erik Funkenbusch <er...@visi.com> wrote:
>Leslie Mikesell <l...@Jupiter.mcs.net> wrote in message
>news:8cgj1a$1qbm$1...@Jupiter.mcs.net...
>> >MS-CHAP i'll grant you on, though I believe it's published. "originally"
>is
>> >meaningless. We're talking about Microsofts standards today.
>>
>> How do you get NT machines to authenticate against anything but
>> a Microsoft box as a domain controller? Is that a protocol?
>> Is it published? Which component can you replace to make
>> the client side co-exist with standard network authentication
>> methods?
>
>MS-CHAP is an auto configuring protocol for dial-ins, not a domain
>controller authentication.
Yes, so we've established that Microsoft does many non-standard
things. That's the point of this discussion, isn't it? I
thought you were trying to claim otherwise. The domain
controller business is the most insideous of the bunch. They
can't claim to interoperate with open systems until they
work properly as clients to someone else's authentication
system.
>> >No, there are no such protections and no such non-disclosures.
>>
>> So where are the domain controller documents? And what is
>> really happening when IIS talking to IE pretends to be doing
>> HTTP but pops up an authentication window that has a
>> third box for 'domain' information? For some reason this
>> doesn't work when a standard http proxy gets between
>> the two. Why is that?
>
>I really don't know, nor do I care.
Then please stop claiming that Microsoft products follow
published standards.
>> WHAT??? You know very well that Front Page offers by default to
>> design animations and other things that can only be displayed
>> by the non-standard extensions in IE.
>
>"offers"? Isn't that a bit of an exageration? In any case, if there is any
>non-HTML4 compliant code generated by Frontpage that works in IE, it's an IE
>extension, not a front page one.
The situation is contrived to encourage unsuspecting HTML authors to
create pages that fail under anything but IE. You can say
a lot of bad things about Microsoft, but they are not ignorant
of the marketing implications of making the competitor's
product look bad.
>
>> Just like visual J++
>> creates java applets that won't work with anything but Microsoft
>> browsers.
>
>It *CAN* generate applets that do this. It most certainly can also generate
>100% pure applets. More exageration.
Not at all. Our first experience was to build an applet with the
visual tools and it just could not be done in a way that worked
right in netscape.
>> Are you going to claim that is accidental? That
>> Microsoft didn't realize that the average user would think
>> the other products were broken instead when they had in
>> fact been tricked into building non-standards-conforming
>> code by these tools?
>
>Any programmer that doesn't understand the language he's using isn't a
>programmer that should be trusted. It's his or her job to know what is and
>isn't standard.
Errr, no. It was Microsoft's job to obey their contract with Sun
and conform to the language specifications instead of their
usual trick of warping it to make everyone else appear broken.
Even the contract wasn't enough to limit this behavior.
>What does that have to do with Microsoft "demanding" ActiveX be contained in
>web pages? Can you stick to the subject you are responding to?
The subject is about how every Microsoft product intentionally fails
to interoperate correctly with standards-conforming products
or offers 'enhancements' by default when the same-vendor client
and server are paired.
>> That is clearly not true when the customers ask for refunds for the
>> pre-installed gunk. Has Microsoft ever responded to these requests?
>
>OEM's take on all support options, including refunds in order to get cheaper
>copies of Windows. Thus, Microsoft is not responsible for giving refunds on
>OEM copies. The OEM is. Microsoft gives refunds on retail copies.
That is not what the shrink-wrap agreement says. It says the end
user should contact Microsoft it they don't agree to the terms.
>> >NFS is a Sun proprietary protocol.
>>
>> Isn't the full spec released now?
>
>I don't think it's documented by Sun. I think it's documented by others.
No, this is a source code release:
http://www.vnunet.com/News/106091
>> Does that mean you can now do your authentication against
>> a standard LDAP server? Or just that they pretend to
>> be a standard server?
>
>If you have an LDAP client, it can connect to ActiveDirectory. If you have
>and LDAP server, ActiveDirectory clients can connect to that.
And can Win2k clients authenticate against it for logins?
>> >It's completely standards conforming Kerberos.
>>
>> Does that mean you can use a standard Kerberos
>> server as your win2K domain controller? Or just
>> that they pretend to be a standard server?
>
>Kerberos has no concept of domain controllers. As such, how could a
>Kerberos server do something for which it wasn't designed?
Kerberos servers have been used by others for authentication.
If Microsoft can't figure out how to do it, then they should
document the protocol that they decided to use instead.
>> >> MS-CHAP is "based on CHAP",
>> >
>> >Inded it was.
>>
>> And broke everything that understood chap. As usual.
>
>And that was almost 10 years ago.
Some things never change. Like the last NT service pack
breaking a Lotus product. That's been going on for 15 years.
>> Really? Our cisco rep says that we can't run normal chap and ms-chap
>> both when authenticating dialins against a domain controller?
>> Why is that?
>
>No, you can't. But the Microsoft client can understand regular CHAP as well
>as MS-CHAP. There is no need to run both.
No, the point was that we had to run ms-chap to let the router
authenticate against the domain controller. And since it can't
then do chap too, it breaks the non-ms clients that don't do
ms-chap. You are right that these are mostly gone. That's the
power and problem of a monoply player. If they do something
non-standard everyone else is forced to rewrite theirs to conform
or go out of business.
>> >Which "standard" did Microsoft introduce, but not document?
>>
>> Domain controller authentication. How do we use another
>> type of authentication with NT/win2k clients?
>
>Since when did Microsoft introduce that as a standard?
I thought you were contending that Microsoft used standard
protocols. Would you like to change to the more realistic
view that Microsoft uses undocumented proprietary protocols
to lock everyone using their client software or development
tools into also using their server products?
>> >The success of the internet as we know it today is most certainly due to
>> >Unix, but it's also due to Microsoft, since without Microsofts support of
>> >it, it would not be anything as ubiquitious as it is today.
>>
>> Huh? OS/2 released full internet support including a browser while
>> Mr. Gates was still proclaiming that windows would never include
>> a browser for free. And MSN was expected to be a proprietary
>> imitation of the internet. People have such short memories...
>
>Mr Gates never proclaimed any such thing that I recall. Do you have a link
>to that?
No, but it was reported in the trade magazines covering the Comdex
where the pre-release of OS/2 Warp was shown before Win95 was
introduced.
>MSN shipped at the same time as the free IE. So, what's your point?
That they were forced by competition to make these changes in
contrast to what they had planned. Now they no longer have
competition.
>Are you suggesting that OS/2 would have made the internet as ubiquitious as
>it is today?
Any operating system would have done so and if market share had
been spread over several vendors, none could have gotten away
with building products that did not interoperate correctly
with the others. OS/2 clearly had a head start at including
a full suite of standards-conforming internet products. When
did MS first ship something that spoke SMTP/POP correctly?
When did they get lpr right? I guess they are finally doing
NFS as an extra cost add-on for win2k. What about X?
Les Mikesell
l...@mcs.com
Erik Funkenbusch
news:8cihqm$13d$1...@Mercury.mcs.net...
> >> >No, there are no such protections and no such non-disclosures.
> >>
> >> So where are the domain controller documents? And what is
> >> really happening when IIS talking to IE pretends to be doing
> >> HTTP but pops up an authentication window that has a
> >> third box for 'domain' information? For some reason this
> >> doesn't work when a standard http proxy gets between
> >> the two. Why is that?
> >
> >I really don't know, nor do I care.
>
> Then please stop claiming that Microsoft products follow
> published standards.
No, I don't care because it's not in the context of the text you were
replying to. The subject of the text you were replying to was about
Microsoft requiring non-disclosures to be agreed to in order to use the
MSDN, which is false. Then you pop in with this statement which has no
relevance to that discussion.
> >> WHAT??? You know very well that Front Page offers by default to
> >> design animations and other things that can only be displayed
> >> by the non-standard extensions in IE.
> >
> >"offers"? Isn't that a bit of an exageration? In any case, if there is
any
> >non-HTML4 compliant code generated by Frontpage that works in IE, it's an
IE
> >extension, not a front page one.
>
> The situation is contrived to encourage unsuspecting HTML authors to
> create pages that fail under anything but IE. You can say
> a lot of bad things about Microsoft, but they are not ignorant
> of the marketing implications of making the competitor's
> product look bad.
And that has to do with supposed "front page extensions" how? The subject
is that front page extensions to HTML do not exist. If there are any, it's
an IE extension, not a front page one. Again, please stick to the topic of
the text you are responding to.
> >> Just like visual J++
> >> creates java applets that won't work with anything but Microsoft
> >> browsers.
> >
> >It *CAN* generate applets that do this. It most certainly can also
generate
> >100% pure applets. More exageration.
>
> Not at all. Our first experience was to build an applet with the
> visual tools and it just could not be done in a way that worked
> right in netscape.
Well, then you are incompetant, because J++ can and does have the ability to
generate 100% pure applets. There is even a switch to enable only
generating such.
> >> Are you going to claim that is accidental? That
> >> Microsoft didn't realize that the average user would think
> >> the other products were broken instead when they had in
> >> fact been tricked into building non-standards-conforming
> >> code by these tools?
> >
> >Any programmer that doesn't understand the language he's using isn't a
> >programmer that should be trusted. It's his or her job to know what is
and
> >isn't standard.
>
> Errr, no. It was Microsoft's job to obey their contract with Sun
> and conform to the language specifications instead of their
> usual trick of warping it to make everyone else appear broken.
> Even the contract wasn't enough to limit this behavior.
The judge has agreed that Microsoft has the right to allow J++ to generate
non-100% pure applets. The judge has required MS to make 100% pure the
default configuration though.
> >What does that have to do with Microsoft "demanding" ActiveX be contained
in
> >web pages? Can you stick to the subject you are responding to?
>
> The subject is about how every Microsoft product intentionally fails
> to interoperate correctly with standards-conforming products
> or offers 'enhancements' by default when the same-vendor client
> and server are paired.
No, the subject of the text you responded to was that Microsoft "demands"
that HTML contains ActiveX. If you aren't replying to the quoted material,
don't quote it. Especially in a line by line manner.
> >> That is clearly not true when the customers ask for refunds for the
> >> pre-installed gunk. Has Microsoft ever responded to these requests?
> >
> >OEM's take on all support options, including refunds in order to get
cheaper
> >copies of Windows. Thus, Microsoft is not responsible for giving refunds
on
> >OEM copies. The OEM is. Microsoft gives refunds on retail copies.
>
> That is not what the shrink-wrap agreement says. It says the end
> user should contact Microsoft it they don't agree to the terms.
That's sort of a catch-all phrase. You see, Microsoft takes on the
responsibility of the OEM if the OEM goes out of business. If your OEM is
still in business then the OEM has the responsibility.
> >> >NFS is a Sun proprietary protocol.
> >>
> >> Isn't the full spec released now?
> >
> >I don't think it's documented by Sun. I think it's documented by others.
>
> No, this is a source code release:
> http://www.vnunet.com/News/106091
Well, all I have to say is... Cool. About time that Sun puts it's source
where it's mouth is. (meaning that Sun as been talking about OpenSource a
lot but not doing anything much about it).
> >If you have an LDAP client, it can connect to ActiveDirectory. If you
have
> >and LDAP server, ActiveDirectory clients can connect to that.
>
> And can Win2k clients authenticate against it for logins?
Not for NT Domain logins.
> >> >It's completely standards conforming Kerberos.
> >>
> >> Does that mean you can use a standard Kerberos
> >> server as your win2K domain controller? Or just
> >> that they pretend to be a standard server?
> >
> >Kerberos has no concept of domain controllers. As such, how could a
> >Kerberos server do something for which it wasn't designed?
>
> Kerberos servers have been used by others for authentication.
> If Microsoft can't figure out how to do it, then they should
> document the protocol that they decided to use instead.
I don't see why Microsoft should be forced to give up it's trade secrets.
> >And that was almost 10 years ago.
>
> Some things never change. Like the last NT service pack
> breaking a Lotus product. That's been going on for 15 years.
That was a bug and was fixed quickly. Bugs happen, to all OS's. Linux has
not been completely free of such issues.
> >> >Which "standard" did Microsoft introduce, but not document?
> >>
> >> Domain controller authentication. How do we use another
> >> type of authentication with NT/win2k clients?
> >
> >Since when did Microsoft introduce that as a standard?
>
> I thought you were contending that Microsoft used standard
> protocols. Would you like to change to the more realistic
> view that Microsoft uses undocumented proprietary protocols
> to lock everyone using their client software or development
> tools into also using their server products?
No, the argument was about microsoft introducing standards to standards
bodies but not documenting them somehow.
> >> Huh? OS/2 released full internet support including a browser while
> >> Mr. Gates was still proclaiming that windows would never include
> >> a browser for free. And MSN was expected to be a proprietary
> >> imitation of the internet. People have such short memories...
> >
> >Mr Gates never proclaimed any such thing that I recall. Do you have a
link
> >to that?
>
> No, but it was reported in the trade magazines covering the Comdex
> where the pre-release of OS/2 Warp was shown before Win95 was
> introduced.
OS/2 Warp came out in what? 94? Comdex would have been fall of 94, and
Microsoft was most definately planning to release IE and release it free at
that point.
> >MSN shipped at the same time as the free IE. So, what's your point?
>
> That they were forced by competition to make these changes in
> contrast to what they had planned. Now they no longer have
> competition.
Huh?
> >Are you suggesting that OS/2 would have made the internet as ubiquitious
as
> >it is today?
>
> Any operating system would have done so and if market share had
> been spread over several vendors, none could have gotten away
> with building products that did not interoperate correctly
> with the others. OS/2 clearly had a head start at including
> a full suite of standards-conforming internet products. When
> did MS first ship something that spoke SMTP/POP correctly?
> When did they get lpr right? I guess they are finally doing
> NFS as an extra cost add-on for win2k. What about X?
Most OS's didn't interoperate well back then.
My point was that if Windows had not embraced the internet, it likely would
have stayed a geek thing. Since Windows would still be the primary OS that
people were using.
R.E.Ballard
"Erik Funkenbusch" <er...@visi.com> wrote:
> Jeremy Allison <jer...@netcom.com> wrote in message
> news:8c3l33$o5g$1...@slb3.atl.mindspring.net...
> > "Erik Funkenbusch" <er...@visi.com> writes:
> >
> > >That's ONE protocol, not hundreds or thousands.
> > > And it's not a proprietary one,
> > > since it still understands DCE/RPC.
> > > You just can't use the extensions.
This "Embrace and Extend" tactic is the very core of the issue
of the Antitrust case in the first place. Each time a public
protocol gains popularity, Microsoft first embraces it, then
adds proprietary extensions which give Microsoft control over
the clients and the servers.
That Microsoft created a web browser wasn't that much of an issue.
What got the developers of Mosaic upset was when Microsoft began
making proprietary extensions which caused IE oriented pages
to break on Netscape - thus driving Netscape out of the market.
One of the fundamental strategies behind IE ActiveX controls was
that Microsoft wanted to take over the internet by making it easy
to view Microsoft Office documents over the Internet. This was
published, it was even mentioned during the court hearing.
After AOL purchased Netscape, Microsoft told AOL that if they
switched to Netscape as their preferred browser, that Microsoft
would remove the AOL quick setup from Windows entirely.
From Netscape 4.5 to 4.7, the only major function of the upgrades
is basicly patching holes created by Microsoft "torpedos" - changes
caused by service packs to Office 97, Office 2000, and Windows NT
that cause severe functional failures in Netscape (coincidence or
deliberate?).
Netscape/AOL is finally releasing the Mozilla enhancements in
Netscape 5.0. The driver behind this may be that many Linux
users were using the KDE browser as the web browser.
> > >The protocol is the same many of those, they just use different
data
> > >formats. MAPI is pretty well defined for instance.
> >
> > The on the wire format used to control an NT Domain
> > controller is *not* documented. That's a protocol in
> > my book. As are the others. They are protocols layered
> > on top of DCE/RPC, in the same way that DCE/RPC is layered
> > on either SMB or TCP or UDP. But they're all protocols.
>
> I would say that MS has a good excuse
> for not documenting certain security
> oriented protocols.
> Let's not get into the argument of security by
> obscurity, but the fact remains that It's much harder to crack an
> undocumented protocol than a documented one given the same code.
> Even the NSA prefers obscurity in addition to security,
> and they are the experts on the subject.
True, they are experts. They were so worried that "double-DES"
would become so uncrackable, and that PGP would enable the passing
of double-DES keys that they consider these open source technologies
to be as dangerous as Nuclear warheads.
The "Solution" the NSA proposed was the use of the "Clipper", which
turned out to have a back door you could drive an 18-wheeler through.
Given the capabilities of double-des, two-fish, and MD4 and RC5,
it's silly to try to keep any algorythm using these algorythms
a secret - unless you are deliberately trying to hide a security
hole or "back door".
> > >I see nothing wrong with them
> > > adding extensions as long as they
> > > still understand the base protocols.
I don't have a problem with extensions, only "trade secret"
proprietary protocols inteded to close open systems.
DHCP - as a proprietary protocol was a security hole.
- as an open protocol, it was possible to track assignments
for audit and trace-back. Especially helpful for nabbig
pedophiles using the internet.
> > But we're discussing punishment for a predatory monopoly
> > as defined by law here. That's part of the punishment,
> > publishing the extensions.
>
> That may be the topic of the thread,
> but this sub-thread has ventured off on
> a tangent.
To you, the issue is only whether Microsoft is allowed to enhance
it's operating system with "Enhancements" such as Web Browsers.
From Microsoft's point of view, that is their issue. But the
case was never about IE vs Netscape (though it was a key part of
the whole trial), it was about Microsoft creating a monopoly
which it protected with lock-out contracts and "embrace/extend"
technology where public standards were adopted then extended to
as state that prevented the use of non-microsoft software.
> I still see nothing wrong with Microsoft adding extensions as
> long as they still understand the base protocols.
> Judge White in the Java case has even agreed.
In both the Java case, and the 1995 case, Microsoft relied on
a strict interpretation of the letter of the law using a clause
written by Microsoft to violate the spirit and intent of the contract.
It's like hiring someone born on February 29th until his 21st Birthday.
He will be 84 years old before he can quit. If the original contract
read "until age 21", and in the final version, after all the other
details were worked out, you changed the wording to "until the 21st
birthday", any average lawyer would assume they meant the same thing.
But to the "leap day baby" it's a difference of 73 years.
> Microsoft spent millions on the development of Exchange.
And there were millions of dollars worth of development that
was contributed to TCP/IP by people like Bill Joy (of SUN),
or SMTP, POP3, and even RPC.
By the time exchange was released, there were nearly 60 million
SMTP users. Prior to the widespread use of the internet, most
companies used "sneaker-net". Most "mail" programs were simply
files on a shared file system.
> I think they should reap the rewards of
> that effort and not just give it away to
> anyone that wants to copy it.
I think Netscape should reap the rewards of
creating Mosaic (most of the developers of Mosaic
later joined Netscape). They should also reap
the rewards of creating Netscape. Microsoft
is using the Mosaic core to drive Netscape out of
the market.
> That's why we have copyrights and patents.
Actually, both copyrights and patents were designed to
encourage publication of knowledge, not to create leverage
for trade secrets. Had it not been for the changes in the
Copyright act of 1976, Microsoft couldn't exist.
> It gives inventors financial incentive for inventing.
No, it gives inventors financial incentive for publishing
their inventions.
Look at Linux and RSA. Though Linux is predominantly based
on GPL and/or BSDL (libraries and applications), users who
want to do e-commerce servers have to pay a royalty to RSA
and to Limpel-Ziv-Welch (for GIF publishing rights).
Microsoft uses it's copyrights to create a network of nondisclosure
agreements.
> I'm not helping them do anything.
> I'm simply expressing my opinion.
> And that is that as an inventor myself,
> I have the right to keep that invention
> to myself and sell it without fear of
> anyone stealing it from me (without
> legal recourse).
Actually, you don't get to keep an invention to yourself.
If you patent, you must file the patent application, including
documentation and a working model, with the patent office - where
others can know exactly how your idea works. Furthermore, if
you try to patent something which existed before you filed,
you can't steal it from anyone else.
I've always advocated a "software patent", of about 5 years.
The 20 year patent was based on the assumption that it would
take 20 years to get the financing, funding, and investments
and buildings and equipment to get your product to market.
Software can be put into production in a matter of weeks
and can be fully marketable within a few months. The IPO
could be as little as 2 years down the road.
> I don't think that just because I have a lot of money, or
> that my product is successful,
> I should have those rights stripped from me.
But you don't have the right to combine your ideas with those of
your competitors - with the intent of excluding your competitor
from the market entirely.
In the competitive UNIX market and server market, public standards
are essential. Several companies tried to push proprietary
equivalents that were supposedly better, but the cost of royalties,
training, and evaluations became such a burdon that companies
like IBM (SNA), DEC (DecNet), Novell (IPX/SPX), HP/Apollo
(Apollo-Ring), and even Tandem (X.25) decided to switch to
TCP/IP because no one wanted to pay royalties to a competitor
who might try to drive them out of the market.
Again, the goal is to create a competitive market in which Microsoft
is no longer a monopoly. Once Microsoft no longer has the ability
to bully OEMs into accepting "all or nothing" terms, it can do
whatever it wants to do. But when you can't even give away the
competition, you need to incubate the competition.
Jeff Grinnell
Erik Funkenbusch wrote:
>
> My point was that if Windows had not embraced the internet, it likely would
> have stayed a geek thing. Since Windows would still be the primary OS that
> people were using.
Sorry to interject here in what has been a rather entertaining thread so
far, but I just couldn't let this slip by.
If Windows had not embraced the internet as it did then Windows market
share would be much less than it is today. It may even be another OS
that sits on the majority of home desktops.
Even Bill Gates himself recognized the threat to MS market share and
rushed to provide a browser. Heck, they even had to use another
company's code to save their bacon from the fire because they had missed
the proverbial boat.
Internet availability can be considered a "killer app" which many people
would have abandoned Windows for if MS did not make it available in
Windows.
If you think that even Microsoft could have ignored the internet and
still be where it is today then you may be more delusional than Bill
Gates himself is.
Jeff
R.E.Ballard
William Adderholdt <wadd...@gte.net> wrote:
> In article <CSCG4.356$9L.1...@ptah.visi.com>,
> Erik Funkenbusch <er...@visi.com> wrote:
> > R.E.Ballard ( Rex Ballard ) <r.e.b...@usa.net> wrote in message
> > news:8ceo0k$2c$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> > > When Sun jumped the gun and claimed that they would be the
> > > exclusive licensee of UNIX, the OSF was formed to implement
> > > an alternative kernel. One of the key goals was that the
> > > OSF kernel had to run all BSD and SysV applications.
> >
> > And OSF-1 is where today?
>
Actually IBM, DEC, and HP as well as Interactive UNIX all implemented
the OSF kernel elements. The OSF kernel was based on the MACH
microkernel and the BSD personality library. In additon to X11,
OSF specified Motif instead of OLIT, and DCE instead of NIS/RPC.
One of the advantages of MACH was that it would make it possible
to run multiple personalities under the microkernel. At one point,
IBM planned to put OS/2 and BSD personalities on the PC, and eventually
DID put UNIX and MVS personalities on System 390. DEC put VMS and
UNIX on the VAX. Eventually, to get the performance advantages of
the legacy system and keep the competitive performance advantage,
along with higher margins, DEC and IBM both integrated most of their
legacy system such that the MACH microkernel became secondary, or
nonexistent. Open VMS, and OS/390 still exist under the OSF concept
and follow OSF heritage and standards, but most OSF systems also
support open source implementations as well. HP eventually just
adopted UNIX/HP_UX as it's primary operating system.
Meanwhile, SysV R4 adopted the BSD personality as well. Eventually,
both UI and OSF agreed to some common standards (which had been common
all along, but were now accepted widely as standards.
When Sun "Lost" the battle for the window manager and RPC, SUN
and AT&T put OLIT, OpenLook Window Manager, and display postscript
into Open Source in late 1991. In 1992, the Linux community ported
OLIT and OLVWM to Linux.
> William Adderholdt
Christopher Browne
>In article <CSCG4.356$9L.1...@ptah.visi.com>,
>Erik Funkenbusch <er...@visi.com> wrote:
>>> > > > No, which PROPRIETARY protocols from MS would that be?
>>>
>>> ActiveX, MS-CHAP, originally SMB, originally Lan Manager,
>>> originally DHCP, and currently they are pushing for the
>>> inclusion of OLE objects within XML.
>
>>MS-CHAP i'll grant you on, though I believe it's published.
>>"originally" is meaningless. We're talking about Microsofts
>> standards today.
>
>How do you get NT machines to authenticate against anything but
>a Microsoft box as a domain controller? Is that a protocol?
>Is it published? Which component can you replace to make
>the client side co-exist with standard network authentication
>methods?
Indeed.
>>> I realize that Microsoft publishes many of it's standards
>>> to MSDN, but protects this information from Linux developers
>>> with nondisclosure agreements.
>>
>>No, there are no such protections and no such non-disclosures.
>
>So where are the domain controller documents? And what is
>really happening when IIS talking to IE pretends to be doing
>HTTP but pops up an authentication window that has a
>third box for 'domain' information? For some reason this
>doesn't work when a standard http proxy gets between
>the two. Why is that?
That's a third situation, known as Trade Secret.
>>NFS is a Sun proprietary protocol.
>
>Isn't the full spec released now?
Which one?
- RFC 1094 (NFS 2)?
- RFC 1813 (NFS 3)?
- RFC 2054 (WebNFS)?
>>> They have chosen to do their
>>> own "Active Directory" instead of X.509/LDAP.
>>
>>Which is LDAP compliant.
>
>Does that mean you can now do your authentication against
>a standard LDAP server? Or just that they pretend to
>be a standard server?
Good question.
>>It's completely standards conforming Kerberos.
>
>Does that mean you can use a standard Kerberos
>server as your win2K domain controller? Or just
>that they pretend to be a standard server?
The creators of Kerberos made the mistake of making it possible to
create noninteroperable conformant implementations.
>>> MS-CHAP is "based on CHAP",
>>
>>Inded it was.
>
>And broke everything that understood chap. As usual.
Indeed it was.
--
You should talk to the DOCTOR.
cbbr...@hex.net- <http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>
Loren Petrich
Erik Funkenbusch <er...@visi.com> wrote:
>R.E.Ballard ( Rex Ballard ) <r.e.b...@usa.net> wrote in message
>news:8ceo0k$2c$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
>> ActiveX, MS-CHAP, originally SMB, originally Lan Manager,
>> originally DHCP, and currently they are pushing for the
>> inclusion of OLE objects within XML.
>ActiveX is entirely documented by the Open Group (the same body that
>documents the X standard).
ActiveX != X-windows. ActiveX is M$-specific, and given M$'s
track record, it is not likely to be very well-documented.
>That must be why there are implementations of DCOM and COM for Solaris and
>HP/UX.
Most likely for infiltration purposes. However, M$ has yet to
release Linux or *BSD versions of these; most likely because the free
Unixes are a much bigger threat than payware Unixes that run only on
expensive, idiosyncratic hardware.
[on sending explore-zip-encoded documents...]
>> As a result, you would have to send an open standards document,
>> either RTF, HTML, XML, or line-feed delimited ASCII text.
>No, most likely the system administrator would be out of a job, since the
>users WANT to be able to do those things, and CEO's and Presidents are
>users.
However, if one can create open-standards substitutes that do
what these users want...
>> Publishers were aware that they had to stick with Kosher HTML,
>> but Microsoft attempted to demand that they include ActiveX controls,
>> FrontPage Extensions, and VBScript on their pages - knowing that
>> this content would not be processed by IETF compatible browsers
>> including Netscape, Hot Java, Mosaic, Arena, and Cello/Viola.
>There's no such thing as a front page extension to HTML. ...
However, M$ has been trying to create a sort of M$-HTML.
>Tell me, how does Microsoft "demand" that web pages contain ActiveX?
By threatening not to support an ISP that will not support
ActiveX; since ISP's must have M$'s help in supporting many of their
customers, M$ had effectively gotten them by the family jewels.
>The customer buys what they want, and what they want is Windows. Thus the
>OEM must buy Windows. Microsoft is dependant upon customer wants any way
>you look at it.
Or feels stuck with.
>> Windows 2000 supports Posix level 1, but not Posix Level 3.
>If Posix level 3 were important, I'm sure MS would support it. It's
>available in a variety of 3rd party add ons.
>> Microsoft still refuses to support X11 (Linux distributors
>> are now including complementary X11 servers).
>X11 is an entirely different GUI than Windows has. ...
Supporting Posix 3 and X11 would make Windows (Windoze?) too
Unix-like, and would tempt developers into always assuming that they are
present. Thus, developers would write easily-ported apps instead of apps
that had lots of M$-specific stuff.
>> Microsoft still refuses to support NFS.
>NFS is a Sun proprietary protocol.
It may have been invented by Sun, but it's an open standard.
Again, if M$ makes Windows too Unix-like, it will be too easy for
developers to avoid M$-specific stuff.
>> They have chosen to do their
>> own "Active Directory" instead of X.509/LDAP.
>Which is LDAP compliant.
In what way?
>> They have
>> chosen to promote VBScript instead of PERL.
>I wasn't aware that PERL was an international standard. ...
But VBScript is M$-specific and Perl is not.
>> They have
>> chosen to stick with IIS instead of supporting Apache.
>Apache isn't an international standard either.
However, IIS is M$-specific and Apache is not. It's interesting
to note that Apple, long known for its taste for Apple-specific
"standards", is supporting Apache in MacOS X.
>> The success of the internet is almost entirely due to UNIX. Microsoft
>> didn't even have the Internet on the radar screen until after
>> UNIX had built up a market 10 times larger than any other "Windows
>> Only" service.
>The success of the internet as we know it today is most certainly due to
>Unix, but it's also due to Microsoft, since without Microsofts support of
>it, it would not be anything as ubiquitious as it is today.
M$ got into the Internet business because it was in danger of
being left very far behind. MSN had flopped, and most other proprietary
online services were either going broke or positioning themselves as
Internet Service Providers. The original big online service, CompuServe,
got bought by one of its imitators, AOL.
>Wait a minute here. Aren't you the one complaining about how microsofts
>minor extensions to standards is the evil of the universe, yet it's OK to
>have proprietary versions of Unix OS's that can be as much as 10%
>incompatible with other Unix OS's?
Because the Unix versions are usually much better documented.
>you could have 10,000 domains on a single machine and that would be counted
>as 10,000 installations of both Unix and Apache, when it's just one.
Which says something about Apache's scalability, if nothing else.
--
Loren Petrich Happiness is a fast Macintosh
pet...@netcom.com And a fast train
My home page: http://www.petrich.com/home.html
Loren Petrich
Jeff Grinnell <lastna...@acunet.net> wrote:
>If Windows had not embraced the internet as it did then Windows market
>share would be much less than it is today. It may even be another OS
>that sits on the majority of home desktops.
I disagree; here's what I suspect would have been more likely:
The makers of Trumpet for Windows and other non-M$ TCP/IP
implementations would have done *very* big business, though Windows's
hairball nature would have made it harder to configure than a built-in M$
version would have been.
However, that would likely have boosted OSes with cleaner TCP/IP
implementations.
R.E.Ballard
l...@Mercury.mcs.net (Leslie Mikesell) wrote:
> In article <7AXG4.624$9L.1...@ptah.visi.com>,
> Erik Funkenbusch <er...@visi.com> wrote:
> >Leslie Mikesell <l...@Jupiter.mcs.net> wrote in message
> >news:8cgj1a$1qbm$1...@Jupiter.mcs.net...
> >> >MS-CHAP i'll grant you on, though I
> >> >believe it's published. "originally" is
> >> >meaningless. We're talking about Microsofts standards today.
That's exactly the problem - we are talking about Microsoft's
standards (Windows is da standard) vs Open Systems standards
as submitted to the IETF, POSIX level 3, W3C (prior to Microsoft's
interference), MPEG, and IEEE. Standards traditionally proven
using open source technology to assure a complete and implementable
specification.
> >> How do you get NT machines to authenticate against anything but
> >> a Microsoft box as a domain controller? Is that a protocol?
> >> Is it published? Which component can you replace to make
> >> the client side co-exist with standard network authentication
> >> methods?
> >
> >MS-CHAP is an auto configuring protocol for dial-ins, not a domain
> >controller authentication.
But it does bring up the second ugly problem. You can use MS-Chap
to get a TCP/IP connection, but you need yet another level of
proprietary software/protocol to access servers using anything OTHER
than HTTP.
> Yes, so we've established that Microsoft does many non-standard
> things. That's the point of this discussion, isn't it? I
> thought you were trying to claim otherwise. The domain
> controller business is the most insideous of the bunch. They
> can't claim to interoperate with open systems until they
> work properly as clients to someone else's authentication
> system.
AND when other non-windows clients can be authenticated to
their system. A true open standard is orthagonal. It goes
both ways.
> >> >No, there are no such protections and no such non-disclosures.
> >>
> >> So where are the domain controller documents? And what is
> >> really happening when IIS talking to IE pretends to be doing
> >> HTTP but pops up an authentication window that has a
> >> third box for 'domain' information? For some reason this
> >> doesn't work when a standard http proxy gets between
> >> the two. Why is that?
> >
> >I really don't know, nor do I care.
You don't, but the Department of Justice, and the Federal Trade
Commission, and the Attorney's general of about 20 states are
very interested in this.
> Then please stop claiming that Microsoft products follow
> published standards.
>
[snip Front Page Extensions]
> The situation is contrived to encourage unsuspecting HTML authors to
> create pages that fail under anything but IE. You can say
> a lot of bad things about Microsoft, but they are not ignorant
> of the marketing implications of making the competitor's
> product look bad.
> >> Just like visual J++
> >> creates java applets that won't
> >> work with anything but Microsoft
> >> browsers.
> >
> >It *CAN* generate applets that do this.
> > It most certainly can also generate
> >100% pure applets. More exageration.
Actually if you use the Microsoft javac designed for
the Microsoft java VM, the class files will contain
direct calls to Micrososft code that will make the
class useless on anything but a Microsoft platform.
> Not at all. Our first experience was to build an applet with the
> visual tools and it just could not be done in a way that worked
> right in netscape.
In some cases, if you are really well behaved and don't drag
in the ActiveX controls or add beans that are wrappers for ActiveX,
you can get source code that can be compiled using a regular
javac to create java "run anywhere" byte code. But the goal of
Sun was to make all byte code runnable anywhere.
> >> Are you going to claim that is accidental? That
> >> Microsoft didn't realize that the average user would think
> >> the other products were broken instead when they had in
> >> fact been tricked into building non-standards-conforming
> >> code by these tools?
> >
> > Any programmer that doesn't understand
> > the language he's using isn't a
> > programmer that should be trusted.
> > It's his or her job to know what is and
> >isn't standard.
Actually, since Microsoft doesn't include standards conformity
in their Certification tests, only a UNIX trained programmer
would even be aware of which standards were required and which
extensions violate the standards.
Microsoft says "Bill makes the rules". Ultimately it's the top
executives at Microsoft who have the final say as to which standards
are adopted and what gets proprietary extensions. "Them with the
gold - makes da rules". I'm sure Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton,
and Washington would beg to differ.
> Errr, no. It was Microsoft's job to obey their contract with Sun
> and conform to the language specifications instead of their
> usual trick of warping it to make everyone else appear broken.
> Even the contract wasn't enough to limit this behavior.
>
> >What does that have to do with
> > Microsoft "demanding" ActiveX be contained in
> >web pages?
In Judge Jackson's finding of fact, and during the trial,
there were a number of cases where Microsoft required that ISPs
using Windows NT servers to use ActiveX controls and other technology
designed to prevent the proliferation of Netscape and UNIX or Linux
on the desktop.
> >> That is clearly not true when the
> >> customers ask for refunds for the
> >> pre-installed gunk.
> >> Has Microsoft ever responded to these requests?
Actually, they have. They flatly rejected any terms and
any attempts to give refunds to people who didn't boot Windows.
Not only did they refuse to honor the refunds given by Toshiba,
they also refused to let Toshiba resell the licenses to other
channels.
> >OEM's take on all support options,
> > including refunds in order to get cheaper
> >copies of Windows. Thus, Microsoft is not
> > responsible for giving refunds on
> >OEM copies. The OEM is. Microsoft gives refunds on retail copies.
Actually, the contracts with the OEMs effectively forbid refunds.
The OEM must prepurchase all licenses, they are not allowed to
sell their licenses to other OEMs, and they aren't allowed to sell
them directly to corporate or retail users. Effectively, if
20% of their customers demand refunds - and the OEM honors it,
under the standard agreement, the OEM looses out entirely.
Currently, the best you can get as an OEM is to purchase Windows 98
and Works. IBM, DELL, and a few others have a special deal that
allows them to purchase less than they need - but they pay a premium
for the right to sell alternatives such as Lotus Smart Suite and Linux.
The standard Windows 98 agreement prevents the installation of Linux.
The OEM isn't allowed to alter the boot sequence from power-up to
the first screen. Recently, OEMs have been pushing back, but they
are still not allowed to put third party applications on the desktop.
The four largest PC makers (IBM, DELL, HP, Compaq) have been pushing
back, but are still threatened by the possibility of License revocation.
> That is not what the shrink-wrap agreement says. It says the end
> user should contact Microsoft it they don't agree to the terms.
You can call Microsoft and tell them you don't agree. They will
tell you not to use the software, put you on a "no support" list,
and will watch you electronically to make sure you don't pirate
their software, but they won't give you a refund.
> >> >NFS is a Sun proprietary protocol.
> >>
> >> Isn't the full spec released now?
NFS is fully supported in GPL. NFS-3 is only supported under BSDL.
> >I don't think it's documented by Sun.
> > I think it's documented by others.
>
> No, this is a source code release:
> http://www.vnunet.com/News/106091
Actually, sun published the specification back in 1991.
They also license NFS for MS-DOS/Windows for about 50 cents/copy.
> >> >> MS-CHAP is "based on CHAP",
> >> >
> >> >Inded it was.
> >>
> >> And broke everything that understood chap. As usual.
> >
> >And that was almost 10 years ago.
Actually, it was only 5 years ago. Keep in mind that Microsoft
didn't even support TCP/IP in Windows for Workgroups. They
included support for NetBEUI, Netware, and Banyan, but didn't
include a TCP/IP stack.
In 1993 Trumpet Winsock was the way to get TCP/IP on a machine.
Trumpet licensed their Winsock very reasonably - about $2000 for
a corporate site license. The combination of Winsock and Mosaic
have users access to UNIX systems in the "point and click" interface.
> Some things never change. Like the last NT service pack
> breaking a Lotus product. That's been going on for 15 years.
Actually 25 years. Microsoft wrote extensions to PET BASIC that
broke MITS BASIC. They wrote extensions to TRS-80 BASIC that broke
PET BASIC. They wrote extensions to MS-DOS 2.0 that broke MS-DOS 1.0
applications. Backward compatibility is not only not important
to Microsoft - Microsoft wants to break applications on predecessor
products because it drive up revenue and enables Microsoft to catch
customers who can't wait for the applications to be upgraded.
Microsoft did this with Lotus 1-2-3, breaking Lotus with Windows 3.1
and pushing OEMs and corporate customers to adopt Excel - which
Microsoft sold for $49. They did the same thing to WordPerfect.
Hard to imagine today that Execl, Word, and Powerpoint were each
about $50. Today, you can't even get an Upgrade for that price.
> >> Really? Our cisco rep says that we
> >> can't run normal chap and ms-chap
> >> both when authenticating dialins
> >> against a domain controller?
> >> Why is that?
> >
> >No, you can't. But the Microsoft client
> > can understand regular CHAP as well
> >as MS-CHAP. There is no need to run both.
Unfortunately, Windows NT 3.xx could ONLY accept MS-CHAP
connections. Microsoft tried to get ISPs to adopt Windows NT
as a terminal server. This meant you HAD to use MS-CHAP.
This was Microsoft's attempt to kill Windows 3.1 (by killing
Trumpet Winsock), and Linux - both of which didn't support
MS-CHAP. You could use Win32 Winsock - but Win32 broke nearly
all Windows 3.1 applications (except MS-OFFICE which was patched
when you did the win32 patch).
> No, the point was that we had to run ms-chap to let the router
> authenticate against the domain controller. And since it can't
> then do chap too, it breaks the non-ms clients that don't do
> ms-chap. You are right that these are mostly gone. That's the
> power and problem of a monoply player. If they do something
> non-standard everyone else is forced to rewrite theirs to conform
> or go out of business.
The key is it killed Windows 3.1 and forced everyone to go to
Windows 95. Furthermore, the Win32 extension killed nearly all
Windows 3.1 applications.
> >> >Which "standard" did Microsoft introduce, but not document?
> >>
> >> Domain controller authentication. How do we use another
> >> type of authentication with NT/win2k clients?
> >
> >Since when did Microsoft introduce that as a standard?
>
> I thought you were contending that Microsoft used standard
> protocols. Would you like to change to the more realistic
> view that Microsoft uses undocumented proprietary protocols
> to lock everyone using their client software or development
> tools into also using their server products?
The bottom line is that Microsoft uses nonstandard protocols
to exclude other platforms from the desktop market. Only after
Apple gave Microsoft a 25% stake did it get the rights to software
that could get past Microsoft's "competitor killers".
> >> >The success of the internet as
> >> > we know it today is most certainly due to
> >> >Unix, but it's also due to Microsoft,
> >> > since without Microsofts support of
> >> >it, it would not be anything as ubiquitious as it is today.
This is actually quite funny, especially since Microsoft has fought
anything that even smells like UNIX since MS-DOS 2.0. They came up
with heirarchal file systems to keep users from wanting UNIX. They
have been fighting UNIX ever since.
By the time Microsoft finally released it's own version of Winsock,
there were over 30 million users using Trumpet Winsock and Mosaic
or Netscape. By the time Microsoft came out with IE, there were
over 80 million users. By the time Windows NT 4.0 came up with
a marginally useful Internet server, there were over 100 million
Internet users.
Keep in mind that Mosaic and Netscape were desgined to make UNIX
available to Windows desktop users, with the explicit goal of
eventually making it possible for users to switch to UNIX with
minimal impact (since they would already have the web browser
interface).
By the time Microsoft "extended" Windows 95 to include support of
the internet, Linux already had plug-n-play, 2 million users,
and was growing at 15%/month. Red Hat had even offered OEM licenses
to numerous computer makers for as little as $5/machine - but was
"locked out" by exclusionary Microsoft contracts.
> >> Huh? OS/2 released full internet support including a browser while
> >> Mr. Gates was still proclaiming that windows would never include
> >> a browser for free. And MSN was expected to be a proprietary
> >> imitation of the internet. People have such short memories...
> >
> >Mr Gates never proclaimed any such thing that I recall.
> >Do you have a link to that?
The problem was that this information predates Microsoft's web sites,
and nearly everyone elses. You might find some commentary on the
Dow Jones site (some press releases in flat-text format), but you
probably have to go to the library and review copies of Byte on
Microfiche or Microfilm.
In 1993, Microsoft was targeting AOL, Prodigy, and Compuserve, each
of which had reached about 1 million users by the end of 1993. The
original model was to use something like a Lotus Notes version of
Exchange. Users would connect to exchange servers - especially at
corporate sites - and pull down content in Microsoft Office format
which they could read at their leisure. These documents would
contain VBA applications that could be used for sending feedback.
This was all supposed to be released with Windows NT 3.x.
What Microsoft didn't know was that AOL was already targeting the
Internet - primarily because the X.25 network over X.3 pads was
already too slow for AOL's TCL interface. Meanwhile the publishers
weren't willing to pay 80% of their revenues to AOL so they were
going directly to the internet as well. By the time Microsoft realized
that the Internet was going to be the new model for on-line services,
they had to scuttle nearly everything.
I have a little more knowledge than most because my boss at Dow Jones
was managing me (I was doing the Internet Project) and a team doing
the Microsoft project. My site was swamped (a Solaris server in
California connected to a T-1 link, while the Microsoft Exchange based
product was running over budget and late. Eventually, the WSJIE team
adopted my web site model (WAIS server with graphics and linked
content and CGI interface).
Microsoft retooled MSN for the Internet. Initially, Microsoft wanted
publishers to use ONLY Windows NT as a server, and they wanted to charge
each publisher $5/user/month for "access to the customer base". The
publishers revolted by blocking MSN and all Microsoft related IP
subnets from connecting to their sites. In some cases, Microsoft
even had to PAY the PUBLISHERS to drop the guards. Furthermore,
the publishers refused to use NT 3.xx since it crashed too regularly.
Microsoft had to live with UNIX, and it had to play nice. But
Microsoft also used IE and MSN to collect information from users about
favorite sites, spending habits, and advertizing usage. This enabled
Microsoft to target key sights and come up with sites designed to kill
the top competitor sites. Of course, once Microsoft established it's
dominance in a particular arena, it would start charging the little
guys a premium price for access.
> No, but it was reported in the trade magazines covering the Comdex
> where the pre-release of OS/2 Warp was shown before Win95 was
> introduced.
Yep. Since Microsoft Windows 95 still wasn't available at that
Comdex, the big news makers were OS/2 Warp and Linux. Yddragisil
Plug-n-play Linux was getting the headlines, because it would configure
the commonly available VLB 80486 machines automatically. It got some of
the video cards wrong, but it did a remarkable job considering that
there were no PCI "plug and play" dialogues available.
By the 1995 Comdex show, the Internet had grown from 2 million in
January 1992 to nearly 64 million in January 1994. In fact even
counting internet was a problem. There were over 100 million uniquely
identified e-mail addresses, and cookies helped identify about 50
million users.
> >MSN shipped at the same time as the free IE. So, what's your point?
That was part of the PLUS pack that came out in November of 1995,
nearly 1 year after the releas of PnP Linux and OS/2 WARP.
> That they were forced by competition to make these changes in
> contrast to what they had planned. Now they no longer have
> competition.
>
> >Are you suggesting that OS/2 would
> > have made the internet as ubiquitious as
> >it is today?
Not OS/2 alone. On the other hand, the combination of
OS/2, Linux, BSD, SCO, MAC, and a cheap version of Solaris
would have prevented Microsoft from being able to corrupt
the standards system as much as it has.
> Any operating system would have done so and if market share had
> been spread over several vendors, none could have gotten away
> with building products that did not interoperate correctly
> with the others. OS/2 clearly had a head start at including
> a full suite of standards-conforming internet products. When
> did MS first ship something that spoke SMTP/POP correctly?
> When did they get lpr right? I guess they are finally doing
> NFS as an extra cost add-on for win2k. What about X?
X11 won't be coming from Microsoft. There is a version from
Hummingbird, but Microsoft tried to force Citrix instead. Furthermore,
you can't get Windows 2000 apps to run as X11 clients (unless you
are running VMWare).
> Les Mikesell
> l...@mcs.com