Re: ul
Kasey Finkenbinder
Meanwhile, Andover.net's management has been totally supportive. Our President, Bruce Twickler, deserves special thanks for his staunch backing and general coolheadedness. And our VP of Corporate Communications, Janet Holian, has done an excellent job of getting information out to other media while letting us work (comparatively) undisturbed.
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There are also rays of light from the other end. I've gotten a small but steady trickle of e-mailed support messages from Microsoft workers who are embarrassed by their employer's actions both in rudely extending Kerberos and their attempt to "publish" their proprietary Kerberos extensions while still trying to keep them hidden behind a non-disclosure agreement.
Please bear in mind that many Microsoft employees are perfectly nice people. For all we know, the nice people at Microsoft may yet persuade the not-so-nice ones that there are times when it's better to work with others to establish industry-wide standards than it is to act as if the freedom to innovate belongs only to Microsoft.
(Special message to nice Microsoft people: Here's a quote you may wish to call to your bosses' attention: "...Kerberos is a multivendor standard, so it allows secure interoperability and the potential for single sign-on between the Microsoft world and other vendor environments." If they ask where you got these words, please refer them to this Microsoft.com page.)Anyway, once again, please accept my personal apology for not being able to share more information with you right now. This is an uncomfortable situation for everyone involved, and we hope that Microsoft chooses to give this story a happy ending as soon as possible.
Oh puh-LEEZE. Having power does not mean you have to use it. Else we'd all be radioactive dust -- both the United States and the Soviet Union had the power to nuke us all until we glowed in the dark, and never used it.
Presumably the powers that be at Microsoft are human beings. (Unless Microsoft Research has in fact created an AI that is simulating the Bill'n'Balmer show for us!). If they are human beings, then they possess free will. If they possess free will, then they have a choice as to whether they use what power they possess. To say that they do not is to put human beings into the same class as sheep dogs, who are victims of their genetics (they have no choice as to whether they will herd sheep -- put a city-bred sheep dog into a pasture full of sheep, and he will herd them!).
Frankly, I have no respect for those who claim that they're not responsible for their own actions because "something else made me do it". I have no respect for the murderer who claims "my abusive mom and dad made me do it", and I have no respect for corporate executives who claim that acting ethically is not an option because "the corporate environment doesn't work like that." Are you a human being? Or are you a sheep dog? Sheesh.
Was that really a copyright issue though? Can the US government even own a copyright? I may be wrong on this, but I thought the government wasn't allowed to hold copyright on anything. They're allowed to have secrets, but that's a different issue than copyright.
Why's that? Because if I was in charge of a major computer company found guilty of hostile, dominating abuse of the computer market, and if my major critic had gone public with a legal notice they would probably ignore, and if that same critic had suffered a devastating DDOS attack shortly afterwards, I'd want to get some distance between myself and them.
Microsoft's amazing and eerie silence is suspicious. In the DVD case, the MPAA has placed web page upon web page, documenting their argument and why they should win. In the DOJ case, Microsoft did the same. In the Slashdot case? ...Nothing.
This isn't natural for a major corporation. Corporations thrive on publicity, Microsoft more than most. Trampling their enemies into the ground should be good for a few column inches, or at least a headline on MSNBC. At the very least, some kind of official dissociation with the DDOS, lest suspicions be raised.
But, no. That Slashdot has lawyers involved in the DDOS case (at least, that's how I would interpret the article) reinforces my suspicion that there is a string possibility that the attack COULD have come from Microsoft or a subsidury. Probably not on direct orders - too easily traced - but more likely by an unspoken agreement and suitable compensation or, at the very least, a blind eye and some accidental deletions from the system logs.
In short, Slashdot might never make it to court. If I'm not just being paranoid & overly imaginative, Microsoft may have turned militant. And that may spell trouble. An organisation with more loose change than the US Government has reserves is a tough opponent at the best of times. If it has decided to play rough and turn to dirtier tactics, we could see some "leaning" on Slashdot's provider, "accidents" causing cable breaks, or other unfortunate events.
As for a "distributed" Slashdot, that might not be such a bad idea. If all the databases could be kept in sync, with delays Since the Slash code is now open, I'm going to have a sit-down to see if I can think how this could be done. I'm sure others will be, too. The sooner load-balancing exists, regardless, the better. It'll keep equiptment costs down, and allow CT to make use of older servers, rather than having to retire them.
Another thing: I can't speak for the rest of Slashdot's readership, but I won't fault you if you back down from this legal challenge. What Microsoft is doing is reprehensible, but Microsoft's actions will not be the subject of this trial. The subject will be copyright violation by Andover, and I don't think the courts will be sympathetic. It would be far better to settle in this case, and then sue Microsoft for this hypocritical attempt to strangle open standards, than to bring up all those issues on the defensive. I hope you can find legal grounds to do the former.
Good luck. Are greatest hopes are with you. Just please don't do anything rash; don't go down in a flame of glory. We want Slashdot to be around for a long, long time, and we don't want to see VA in financial trouble for funding this legal battle. Slashdot is of more use as a living advocate than as a dead martyr.
Third, should slashdot decide the odds are legally against them on this and back down, I won't fault you for it - you gave it a good, hard look. Last, while you are fighting censorship against you, don't forget that it is a two-sided sword - do not censor people here on slashdot, lest ye be considered hypocritical.
It's probably more accurate to say that the government is an agent of the companies. Certainly, using dollars to buy votes is the most effective way to win elections in America, so money is power over politics, and the only entities able to give virtually unlimited monies to candidates are corporate bodies or the interest groups funded by them.
To be sure, Slashdot's confrontation with M$ would have proceeded on the dead tree medium sooner or later, and the exchange of paper wouldn't have changed very much about the essential issues. But Roblimo could have bought himself a couple days to cool heads at Slashdot and talk to the lawyers, while the M$ lawyers would have been essentially idle, sitting expectantly in front of their Outlook clients and gradually losing their patience.
I can't understand why MS is doing this. Lets assume the the most likely scenerio happens, and Slashdot is forced to remove the actual copyrighted material but is allowed to keep the "How to get the specs without seeing the licence agreement" posts.
Unless this really is an anti-SAMBA thing, I can't see why MS would do this. The SAMBA consipiracy theory (for those who haven't heard it) goes, briefly: MS make the specs freely available, but forbid implementation from them. Then, even if the SAMBA team implements the MS Kerboes protocol, they can't prove that it was clean room reverse-engineered because the specs were so freely available.
If this theory is correct (which I'm not sure I believe), then we must consider the possibility that agents of MS posted at least some of those posts. They would have known the the SAMBA team would have read it. Of course, it would have been much simpler to post the specs anonymously on the SAMBA mailing list saying somethign like "I'm a k00l hacker who got these specs from MS". The they could have claimed that all the SAMBA team had seen the (illegaly obtained) specs and therefor could not clean-room reverse engineer them.
No, I don't really believe this, but I honestly can't see any other even sligtly rational explaination for why MS would do this. All it is going to achieve for them is a lot of attention being focused on their "Embrace & Extend" policies, which I would not have thought they would want right now.
Maybe it really is an "Anti Open-Source" tactic. Perhaps soon we will see those supposed "Hidden-API's" that IIS uses to perform so well posted with a similar licence, so the MS can guarantee that Apache will never be able to use them.
On trade secret law their position is much less firm. A judge might allow their claim that something can be made public to anyone who bothers to look but still be called "secret", but I rather doubt it. Therefore this is not the place where the software industry is going to make a stand for UCITA. Too much risk of losing. If you want a test case you make it out of cast iron, with yourselves unambiguously in the role of goodies. Make it a software pirate with stacks of copied CDs in a police raid, and have the evidence for wrongdoing rest on a clickthrough license. Don't do a David vs Goliath act, because the judge is apt to side with David.
Yes, Microsoft does the job for an incredibly large number of people, and for them, it does it well. I've had to tell my mother far too many times, though, that the innumerable flukes on her computer are because "that's just the way it is" to give MS any respect.
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