Chaz -
Do you know anything about this (clipped from usenet?) :
<snip> wrote:
Stealing technology hasn't ever been a real problem with Microsoft.
What about kerberos? Microsoft wanted the technology, had their lawyers hammer away at the public license, and now it is going to be a part of NT 5. Worst of all, Microsoft is going to be adding their own Windows extensions to the protocal that will make it non-compliant with 16 years of kerberos implementations!
The technology is effectively stolen, a legal loop hole put it into
Microsoft's hands, and 16 years of work at MIT to produce a secure standardized communications mechanism free to the public was shot. To quote Penio:
"If you don't sell to us, we'll include our, incompatible to yours, API in Windoze and everybody will develop for it for the simple reason that it will be included in our (and only) development kit. And, although your technology may be better, we will kill it and will promote our lousy stuff."
A statement I agree with wholeheartedly. Evil Empire -- undoubtably. They squash innovation. They squash competition.
I don't think Microsoft has ever had a unique idea that succeeded. Their software has either been cloned from innovators (every office product, every BackOffice product, Windows, NT. IE), bought from weaker companies (MS Flight Simulator, from my home town, for example), or out-and-out stolen (Kerberos, off the top of my head). Unique ideas? How about 'Microsoft Bob' for a winner.
FYI, the part of the kerberos license Microsoft sidestepped was the part that said, in essence: "if you base a commercial product on our publicly-available source, you must let us know of the changes so that we may develop a compatible version accessible for free to rest of the user community." Microsoft didn't really like that idea.
-justinb |
