Re: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish

[Arun Sharma <adsharma@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Mar 14, 2000 at 02:43:14PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> Hi,
> 
>         Ob Linux: If you have a UNIX based kerneberos realm, you can
>  still get w2k clients to use your UNIX kerberos servers by following
>  the recipe here:
>  <URL:http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q232/1/70.ASP?LNG=ENG&SA=ALLKB&FR=0>
>  Thus you don't have to go to a all w2k shop and retain full kerberos
>  coverage. 

Thanks. That proves my point. You don't need GPL to force people to
be interoperable.

<snip>

>  Arun> GPL can only "protect" code, not ideas [1] Microsoft will still
>  Arun> be "free" to implement their own kerberos extensions.
> 
>         They would have been forced to open the extensions so people
>  could write compatibility in UNIX servers.
> 

Only if they used GPL'ed code.

>  Arun> Do you have any evidence to suggest that Microsoft used MIT code ? 
> 
>         Actually, yes. Microsoft did not write the code for kerberos,
>  or their RPC, from scratch. They joined OSF and took code from
>  them. And this is not conjecture.  Even microsoft is not stupid
>  enough to reimlemnt something when they are presented with
>  unprotected code ;-) 

Ok, it's a little more than a conjecture. But my point still holds - if
Microsoft wanted to, they could reimplement the code. If you're claiming
that Microsoft is incapable of rewriting kerberos, given it's description,
I'll rest my case.

> 
>         Anyway, in the past MS had had a terrible track record
>  implementing security (see: http://www.counterpane.com/pptp.html),
>  and I don't thikn they could have even come close to creating
>  something like Kerberos.

While I don't agree with some of their policies, I think it's unfair
to say Microsoft is an incompetent software organization.

Microsoft SQL server holds the current TPC-C record.

http://www.tpc.org/new_result/ttperf.idc

	-Arun