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SubjectRe: Comments on Microsoft Open Source documentA
On Sat, Nov 07, 1998 at 08:05:53PM -0800, Tim Smith wrote:

> On Thu, 5 Nov 1998 ralf@uni-koblenz.de wrote:
> > Makes me think of writing application proxies that trash any attempt to
> > use M$ proprietary extensions.
>
> A more productive thing to do would be define and implement open extensions
> that have the same functionality as any proprietary MS extensions to standard
> protocols.
>
> In many cases, the standard protocols aren't optimal. E.g., if one were
> designing the web from scratch, one could do a lot better than HTTP.
> If Microsoft picks some place where the standard protocols are not as good
> as they could be, and defines a Microsoft protocol that performs better,
> then what we need to do is define an open protocol that addresses the same
> deficiencies in the standard protocols, and make that open protocol the
> new standard.
>
> Then, rather than subverting standards, all Microsoft gets to do is pick
> the order in which deficiencies in the current protocols are fixed.
>
> As far as the web goes, if Apache and Netscape can do this, I don't think
> Microsoft can harm things. Apache, because it is numerically the most
> popular server, and Netscape, because it seems to be the most popular
> server at large businesses (Apache has more overall, but a lot of those
> are small non-commercial or hobby sites...if you weight each site by
> how important it is, Netscape is probably the most popular server).

This whole thread is actually about power and abuse of such by Microsoft.
Feel free to design better protocols and the OSS comunity will consider
using them. Maybe Microsoft as well. On the other side anythign Microsoft
so far took into their finger quickly got mutated into something else,
often with extensions either undocumented or designed to give their own
products a headstart. You see, the protocol sword has only one sharp side
and that one is directed to our throat.

When OSS efforts were started long time ago the aim was to go for a world
that is not under the pressure of a power as Microsoft's. This has been
achieved in form of the GPL by forcing source to be public. The downside
is that it leaves the OSS comunity without a defence against somebody
like Microsoft except trying to run faster than those who are out to
catch 'it.

This leaves a somewhat self contradictory problem to solve for the OSS
comunity, how to get enough power to defend itself without giving anybody
else the power over the OSS comunity. Time for the politicians and
lawyer on this list to think about this and warm up their MUAs. I go back
debugging a piece of free software.

Ralf

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