3 ms·

I believe the protocol documentations made by Microsoft were not done out of the goodness of Microsoft's heart, but rather were the result of government action

I believe the protocol documentations made by Microsoft were not done out of the goodness of Microsoft's heart, but rather were the result of government action in the US and European Union in the last decade.

meaty 14y ago
Not strictly how it is. Here's what I saw: They were preparing the specifications before the government action. I worked for an organisation which was working with them at the time and they were pushing drafts of their documentation to us - the same ones you see on the Open Specification Promise. To be honest, the government action halted this process because they had to get a shit load of legal people involved. I think Microsoft has two camps inside. Those who really are technology focused and the marketing and management team. The latter are the ones doing all the damage. The technology people I genuinely feel sorry for.
- yuhong 14y ago
  Well, I think they first tried charging royalties before finally disclosing the docs and a patent list to Samba on royalty-free conditions. See this: http://www.samba.org/samba/PFIF/PFIF_history.html http://www.samba.org/samba/PFIF/PFIF_history.html http://www.samba.org/samba/PFIF/PFIF_agreement.html http://www.samba.org/samba/PFIF/PFIF_agreement.html
  - meaty 14y ago
    They did for some things. There are several factions inside Microsoft, some more respectable than others [1]. We managed to get MSRPC/DCOM documentation out of them no problems at all. TBH there was very little internal documentation on it apparently, most of it being inside 4-5 peoples' heads. [1] Small note to IE team: fuck you. I opened a genuine defect with steps to reproduce on Connect 19 months ago which was a regression between IE8 and IE9 and it was canned earlier today with the old bug vs feature thing. This is after 6 months of arguing with PAID UP GOLD PARTNER support over the issue as well which fucked up any IE upgrade plans for our clients for 6 months.
    - yuhong 14y ago
      To be honest, MSRPC and DCOM was based on DCE RPC and MS donated DCOM to the Open Group. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeDCE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeDCE
      - lukeh 14y ago
        The Open Group's DCOM implementation wasn't open source. Also, MSRPC/DCOM is just an RPC layer, the real value/lock-in was in the protocols built on top of them, such as Active Directory. dcerpc.org has a maintained version of the OSF DCE RPC runtime (this bounced around from the FreeDCE project, to PADL, then Novell, Likewise and now Apple).
- yuhong 14y ago
  "I think Microsoft has two camps inside. Those who really are technology focused and the marketing and management team. The latter are the ones doing all the damage. The technology people I genuinely feel sorry for." Reminds me of this: http://www.os2museum.com/wp/?p=1329&cpage=1#comment-11713 http://www.os2museum.com/wp/?p=1329&cpage=1#comment-1171... The referenced PX00307 refers to this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3441885 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3441885
bkuhn 14y ago
(BTW: I'm the author of the topic blog post) I've not seen it from the inside like the Samba developers have, but I do work closely with them. Based on that experience, I think the relationship between Samba and Microsoft is complicated. It's true that the EU case forced Microsoft to release certain documentation. I doubt they'd have done it without that. But, Microsoft did take somewhat of a "if we can't beat them, join them" approach to the situation, which I think was useful. I certainly still have a strong bias against Microsoft due to their past actions, but I don't think they've been completely begruging on this issue in their collaboration with Samba. It's about their self-interest, though: Microsoft now needs Samba more than Samba needs them. They're still acting in service of their profits, but now their profit-motive is more aligned with helping Samba than it once was.
- rogerbinns 14y ago
  > It's true that the EU case forced Microsoft to release certain documentation. I doubt they'd have done it without that. I was peripherally involved in that (my employer was part of the lawsuit) and Microsoft releasing the specs for RDP. It was somewhat encumbered which would have been hugely problematic for free software projects, but not for commercial entities (who I worked for). I'd reverse engineered RDP, but that is way more time consuming than starting with specs. That work was put into escrow along with my papers, hexdump printouts with marker highlighting and scribbles etc. Only one engineer was given access to the RDP spec which was kept in his locked office. Even the component including RDP was built by him in his office on computers in his office which were not networked. I don't know if what we did was because our lawyer was too paranoid, or not paranoid enough!

meaty 14y ago

Not strictly how it is. Here's what I saw: They were preparing the specifications before the government action. I worked for an organisation which was working with them at the time and they were pushing drafts of their documentation to us - the same ones you see on the Open Specification Promise. To be honest, the government action halted this process because they had to get a shit load of legal people involved. I think Microsoft has two camps inside. Those who really are technology focused and the marketing and management team. The latter are the ones doing all the damage. The technology people I genuinely feel sorry for.

yuhong 14y ago
Well, I think they first tried charging royalties before finally disclosing the docs and a patent list to Samba on royalty-free conditions. See this: http://www.samba.org/samba/PFIF/PFIF_history.html http://www.samba.org/samba/PFIF/PFIF_history.html http://www.samba.org/samba/PFIF/PFIF_agreement.html http://www.samba.org/samba/PFIF/PFIF_agreement.html
- meaty 14y ago
  They did for some things. There are several factions inside Microsoft, some more respectable than others [1]. We managed to get MSRPC/DCOM documentation out of them no problems at all. TBH there was very little internal documentation on it apparently, most of it being inside 4-5 peoples' heads. [1] Small note to IE team: fuck you. I opened a genuine defect with steps to reproduce on Connect 19 months ago which was a regression between IE8 and IE9 and it was canned earlier today with the old bug vs feature thing. This is after 6 months of arguing with PAID UP GOLD PARTNER support over the issue as well which fucked up any IE upgrade plans for our clients for 6 months.
  - yuhong 14y ago
    To be honest, MSRPC and DCOM was based on DCE RPC and MS donated DCOM to the Open Group. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeDCE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeDCE
    - lukeh 14y ago
      The Open Group's DCOM implementation wasn't open source. Also, MSRPC/DCOM is just an RPC layer, the real value/lock-in was in the protocols built on top of them, such as Active Directory. dcerpc.org has a maintained version of the OSF DCE RPC runtime (this bounced around from the FreeDCE project, to PADL, then Novell, Likewise and now Apple).
yuhong 14y ago
"I think Microsoft has two camps inside. Those who really are technology focused and the marketing and management team. The latter are the ones doing all the damage. The technology people I genuinely feel sorry for." Reminds me of this: http://www.os2museum.com/wp/?p=1329&cpage=1#comment-11713 http://www.os2museum.com/wp/?p=1329&cpage=1#comment-1171... The referenced PX00307 refers to this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3441885 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3441885

bkuhn 14y ago

(BTW: I'm the author of the topic blog post) I've not seen it from the inside like the Samba developers have, but I do work closely with them. Based on that experience, I think the relationship between Samba and Microsoft is complicated. It's true that the EU case forced Microsoft to release certain documentation. I doubt they'd have done it without that. But, Microsoft did take somewhat of a "if we can't beat them, join them" approach to the situation, which I think was useful. I certainly still have a strong bias against Microsoft due to their past actions, but I don't think they've been completely begruging on this issue in their collaboration with Samba. It's about their self-interest, though: Microsoft now needs Samba more than Samba needs them. They're still acting in service of their profits, but now their profit-motive is more aligned with helping Samba than it once was.

rogerbinns 14y ago
> It's true that the EU case forced Microsoft to release certain documentation. I doubt they'd have done it without that. I was peripherally involved in that (my employer was part of the lawsuit) and Microsoft releasing the specs for RDP. It was somewhat encumbered which would have been hugely problematic for free software projects, but not for commercial entities (who I worked for). I'd reverse engineered RDP, but that is way more time consuming than starting with specs. That work was put into escrow along with my papers, hexdump printouts with marker highlighting and scribbles etc. Only one engineer was given access to the RDP spec which was kept in his locked office. Even the component including RDP was built by him in his office on computers in his office which were not networked. I don't know if what we did was because our lawyer was too paranoid, or not paranoid enough!