Microsoft is obliged to open up its protocols as a result of an anti-trust settlement, but with fees for protocol licensing starting at $50,000 for any hardware or software that wants to connect with the Microsoft file system, competitors complain that Microsoft is treating its obligation to open up as a lucrative revenue stream rather than the punishment that it was intended to be. They note that “the general practice in the industry is to license protocols for free.”
Or more likely just as expected. Can anyone seriously be surpised by this “turn” of events?
Microsoft is a business in the business of big business, which means big money.
That’s great!
I mean, seriously… that really gave me a good guffaw for the day.
“They note that “the general practice in the industry is to license protocols for free.””
So historically you could go to most companies that had a protocol and license it for free?
In other news: Linux is ten times more expensive than Windows.
Heh.
The exhorbitant fees will encourage alternative technologies.
i wish it bekame mikrosoft…
So historically you could go to most companies that had a protocol and license it for free?
Yes, or for the cost of a product such as a toolkit. Some restrictions were imposed by the licences such as how it could be used and with what other tools.
For the most part, though, companies encourage the use of protocols any way they can so that others will adopt them and the protocols become popular. This almost always means free to use and no need to explicitly get a signed contract/licence, and the protocol also has no reuse restrictions; I can pass company X’s protocol over to you and you can pass it on to another person without asking X’s permission.
To encourage broad use, the protocols are usually provided to a standards body that adopts the protocol and gives credit (but not licence fees or other payments) to the originating group or company.
On the other hand, say I wanted to license a GPL’ed Linux protocol and turn it proprietary, how much would it cost me?.
For example, say I wanted to license Reiser4 FS and make it proprietary product around it (I plan to add some enhancements that I don’t want to contribute back to open source)….how much?
“On the other hand, say I wanted to license a GPL’ed Linux protocol and turn it proprietary, how much would it cost me?. ”
Probably impossible. GPLed programs are not “Free as in beer” but instead are “Free as in speech”. Most programmers who GPL their code would not whore their selves out like that.
On the other hand, say I wanted to license a GPL’ed Linux protocol and turn it proprietary, how much would it cost me?.
For example, say I wanted to license Reiser4 FS and make it proprietary product around it (I plan to add some enhancements that I don’t want to contribute back to open source)….how much?
Dunno, ask the guy who holds the copyrights and regularily licenses it out to other companies =P (You really picked a bad example there btw). Ext3, Samba, etc. would have been a much better example. I understand your point though.
On the other hand, say I wanted to license a GPL’ed Linux protocol and turn it proprietary, how much would it cost me?.
For example, say I wanted to license Reiser4 FS and make it proprietary product around it (I plan to add some enhancements that I don’t want to contribute back to open source)….how much?
1) What is a “Linux protocol”?
2) How can a protocol be GPL’ed? AFAIU you can’t copyright a protocol: you can have patents on it or keep it as a trade secret.
3) Any protocol devised for and used in a GPL program (or any free software/open source program) is free for you to use as you see fit.
OK so lets say EXT3….
Let’s say there are 10 contributors and 9 of them agree to sell me their work – what happens if the 10th guy doesn’t want the money – (say he’s a true-died-in-wool-GPL’er). Can the 9 other guys remove his work and still license me the their GPL code or is there no way to remove gpl code?
Jesus Christ, please stop trolling, you are embarassing yourself.
1. If you want to buy the right to modify a software to parts of which 10 people hold the copyright, but only 9 of them want to sell it to you, you can only use the parts that have and can be sold to you, just like with any software.
2. This article is about having having free access to protocols, not buying software, so your trolling is totally off topic.
Ok. You start from saying you persuade them not to release any further ext3 under gpl. Which you couldn’t since they would be based around already gpl’d code thus turning it into proprietary commercial version would be a clear violation. Thank god there’s no easy way for you to turn opensource gpl’d oftware into commercial. If you really want this [profit by exploiting the free work of good people] then grab bsd licensed code, that you can further modify, close, and sell.
Related to protocols above, you can gpl an implementation, you can’t gpl a protocol specification. You can patent it though.
> Thank god there’s no easy way for you to turn opensource gpl’d oftware into commercial.
you mean to tell me that Open source isn’t a two way street?. Close source can become open source for $50K but not the other way around?
> profit by exploiting the free work of good people
I’m willing to pay good money – so who’s talking about exploiting open source? I’m just trying to find at what cost. Is MS waaay out of line for charging 50K?
Your question about “buying” open source is nonsensical. Open source software belongs to everyone once it is released. That is the whole concept. Nobody can buy it all up and close it down.
It’s as if we were talking about the high cost of houses in Washington DC and you said “Oh yeah, well how much to buy the Lincoln Memorial?” Would that be clever?
The point is the Court punished Microsoft by ordering it to open up certain protocols? It’s obscene that they would try to get rich off of compliance.
linux companies will license this stuff to further distance themselves from the nature of the GPL and get the ability to sell their linux-based OS’s better while exploiting the free OS and free employment.
I mean, some already licensed windows media stuff….
im pretty positive im right
linux companies will license this stuff to further distance themselves from the nature of the GPL and get the ability to sell their linux-based OS’s better while exploiting the free OS and free employment.
I mean, some already licensed windows media stuff….
im pretty positive im right
It was Turbo Linux which licenced a Microsoft Windows Media CODEC as to allow playback on their desktop offerings (along with the bundled DVD player they included with the software title).
Microsoft is probably not “making” nearly as much money off this as many would suspect, if it’s a flat fee for the licensing (I don’t care to read the article) since there aren’t likely to be that many buyers to use the protocol, or at least not that many that are serious. That’s where the $50K comes in: it helps Microsoft weed out the people that aren’t likely to do things with an air of seriousness. It’s one thing to lend out knowledge of your protocols and formats, but if it creates more problems with end-support and alienating customers when it isn’t done correctly, that doesn’t help the IP owners’ cause any.
Just because they’ve been ordered to make available their protocols for licensing, doesn’t mean they are required to just give them away for free like many people do: if the court had decided that Microsoft had no “right” to profit at all from their IP, they would have stipulated that in the judgment. It’s not like Microsoft is in great need to spread the use of their protocols (which cost a lot of resources to develop, since it takes paid employees time to design, create, test, document [which costs a lot of time/resources to do properly: look at how much FOSS software has no documentation or very poor documentation: I wonder why THAT is?] etc.) since they’ve got what they need already.
Now, what if you were to go to other industries and demand of the inventors/builders of something like specialized automobile parts that you have the right to make them? Do you think you’d get that license for free? What about the design of some famous pants, for example, like Levi’s? Sure, anyone can make pants, but to exactly copy the design requires licensing to be legal, doesn’t it?
Roll on the “Mactel”!
Looks like its time to try linux (again).
I use WinXP, having tried unsuccesfully to migrate to linux (I am pro-open source) but found hardware compatibility problems despite trying several different distros (mandrake, suse, slackware, xandros, vector etc). For me, a non-IT professional, linux was/is quite difficult to use day to day on my main PC.
I understand why Microsoft is doing this, it is a business, perhaps the judge(s) should have specified that the licence protocols should have been made free of charge or for a nominal charge. But as they say, hindsight is always 20/20.
I already use as much open-source applications as possible, only my OS is microsoft. Now this news has renewed my desire to go the “whole hog”……
This doesn’t look like a revenue stream for MS – much more like another trick to lock out FOSS or other competitors from the protocols since they (FOSS) cannot charge on a per-user basis… or afford $50k at all.
Oracle, Red Hat, Nokia and IBM charge a lot of money for their products, i believe IBM charges +100000 for editions of websphere for example.
I fail to see why they should given microsoft server-to-server protocol licenses and implementation details for free – especially when they will be charging their customers for the privilege of using products derived from these protocols.
websphere pricing -> http://www-306.ibm.com/software/info/ecatalog/en_US/products/G10633…
rhel pricing -> http://www.redhat.com/software/rhel/compare/server/
When you see “protocols” think of two stiff people from different embassys being formally introduced at a gala event. Protocols often deal with the timing and form of the hand shake and everything around it.
On the other hand, say I wanted to license a GPL’ed Linux protocol and turn it proprietary, how much would it cost me?.
GPL does not cover protocols. It covers copyright, like the specific arangement of the contents and arangement of words in a book.
Protocols — if covered by a licence — are covered by patent law or are treated as secret or just difficukt to obtain information. Think of raw facts and specifications, but not necessarily the specific arrangement using words.
Note of confusion: The documents covering the protocol are covered by copyright law also. Just like a novel, though, the facts are not covered by copyright just the specific arrangement.
For example, say I wanted to license Reiser4 FS and make it proprietary product around it (I plan to add some enhancements that I don’t want to contribute back to open source)….how much?
I think Reiser4 is dual licenced; you can get a closed version of Reiser FS. Even if this is not the case, it has an API that allows you to write plugins that could be closed.
That said, this has nothing to do with protocols.
Everything they can get their greasy fingers around (regardless of method) is an opportunity for additional revenue and market suffication. The only real innovation is coming out of their marketing and finance departments.
Microsoft is probably not “making” nearly as much money off this as many would suspect, if it’s a flat fee for the licensing (I don’t care to read the article) since there aren’t likely to be that many buyers to use the protocol, or at least not that many that are serious. That’s where the $50K comes in: it helps Microsoft weed out the people that aren’t likely to do things with an air of seriousness.
Nope. Not the case here. From the article;
“The original fee schedule looks like this. If you’re creating a piece of network software or hardware that needs to talk to a Microsoft file system – a printer, storage server, or a piece of middleware – you must agree to pay Microsoft $50,000 up front in Prepaid Royalties. The fee then depends on how many users the product has, and what is accessed. For the ‘Print and File Server’ portion you pay on a user basis up to $1,900, but no less than $80 per server. For workgroup access (Domain Controllers command a higher royalty) you pay up to $600, but no less than $100 per server.“
As a per-device fee, no implementations are possible unless you first pay the $50k. Patents are likely involved. Note, there is no rebate on the $50k and the fee can be larger.
The $50K+ fees include no support for any implememtation. Since the protocol documents are complete, it’s a sunk cost minus the distribution of the documents. If Microsoft isn’t efficient in distributing documentation, maybe they aren’t in the right business?
Additionally, (from the article) …
“The company has been obliged to open up its protocols as a result of the Antitrust settlement in the US, but the fees it’s charging don’t reflect that it was found guilty, and is being punished, says lawyer Thomas Vinje. Vinje, a counsel for Clifford Chance and representing the European Committee for Interoperable Systems, says they should be licensed for free.”
… Microsoft is once again using the letter of the law to give the finger to the spirit of the law. They fully expected lawsuits over this and they don’t care.
This is not an honest, cover your costs, good faith gesture.
for great justice!
When the court decided to make Microsoft open up its protocols it was clearly understood that they would be open and free and not that Microsoft would keep them closed and charge people to use them. This is getting out of control. Fortunately there are more people and companies switching to Linux than to Longhorn which means we are finally at the end of a near monopolistic era in operating systems.
This is the same as recieving community service as a punishment and then charging for the work done. It’s out of order.
more than a punishment this is a reward.
If you’re creating a piece of network software or hardware that needs to talk to a Microsoft file system – a printer, storage server, or a piece of middleware – you must agree to pay Microsoft $50,000 up front in Prepaid Royalties. The fee then depends on how many users the product has, and what is accessed.
This makes no sense. Just because we have installed microsoft windows on our pcs for our 2000 employees, we need to pay microsoft again in order to enable our custom made code to communicate with the filesystems on OUR computers for which we have already obtained licenses???
This is like buying a product, then paying the manufacturer every time you use it, and paying some more to get a manual on how to use it.
Anybody thinking this is fair needs a frontal lobotomy. It’s not and this is the reason anyone basing their futur IT solutions on microsoft can see further than their nosetips.
You people crack me up. You really think MS is going to place nice like everyone else? The reason why the are one of the largest software development companies in the world is exactly b/c they don’t play “nice” with everyone. Stop brisling at their tactics! They’ve been doing this for years…nothing new.
They are selling the protocols for such an absorbent price b/c who in their right mind would want to pay 50k+client costs to connect to a print or file server?! That’s the whole point. The high price most likely outweighs the importance of using the protocols unless you are developing a huge product that will fly of the shelves. That means they don’t want every Tom, Dick, and Harry to develop using MS proprietary methods. Once again, do you have to be reminded that MS doesn’t and will not be “nice”?
That’s why OSS companies don’t want to act like victims. You have to play the game the way MS plays the game or else you don’t play at all. They will rape you for all it’s worth and will not think twice about it unless you beat them in litigation. MS has so many lawsuits that Bill Gates doesn’t know or care about everyone that’s suing them and for what – that’s what the 100+ payrolled laywers are for.
“The original fee schedule looks like this. If you’re creating a piece of network software or hardware that needs to talk to a Microsoft file system – a printer, storage server, or a piece of middleware – you must agree to pay Microsoft $50,000 up front in Prepaid Royalties. The fee then depends on how many users the product has, and what is accessed. For the ‘Print and File Server’ portion you pay on a user basis up to $1,900, but no less than $80 per server. For workgroup access (Domain Controllers command a higher royalty) you pay up to $600, but no less than $100 per server.”
does this affect samba and so forth?????
This makes no sense. Just because we have installed microsoft windows on our pcs for our 2000 employees, we need to pay microsoft again in order to enable our custom made code to communicate with the filesystems on OUR computers for which we have already obtained licenses???
Sounds alot like the CALs you are “supposed” to buy to access a Windows Server to me.
This is just the usual M$ tactics, maximising their revenue stream and giving the finger to the justice system. Forget about the fact that until now protocols have been open.
When you’re a monopoly you increase all your prices to 0.0001% less than whatever the product is worth to your customer. That way you get all the benefit and the net gain to the customer is zero. Only with a true free market and realistic competition do prices converge to cost plus a reasonable profit covering the risk associated with releasing a product.
With IP industries and the necessity of interoperability and high switching costs this is even more true. IP law is currently badly broken with unstable, “winner-take-all” markets where the incumbent makes a 1000+ times the profit on the same product compared to the competition. Meaning no realistic competition in any IP field and no net benefit to the customers of that industry.
When the court decided to make Microsoft open up its protocols it was clearly understood that they would be open and free and not that Microsoft would keep them closed and charge people to use them. This is getting out of control.
I challenge you to show me where any court has ruled that MS must give away its protocols for free. What the court actually said was that the price needed to be “reasonable”. MS invented these protocols. It owns IP surrounding them; therefore, it deserves to be compensated for their use at a reasonable price. $50K is hardly unreasonable to the kinds of organizations that are going to want this information (ie. Sun, IBM, etc). What is that you say? “The open source charlatans want this stuff for free”? Awwwwwwwww … I really, really, really feel for you … but, if you’re serious, open up your wallets and pay the piper.
Fortunately there are more people and companies switching to Linux than to Longhorn which means we are finally at the end of a near monopolistic era in operating systems.
Can I quote you on that? Seriously, that was pretty funny. I wish that I had even a dime for each of these predictions that Windows was on its deathbed. I’d be rich.
Qujote: “Stop brisling at their tactics! They’ve been doing this for years…nothing new.”
Yes. And that’s why the US DOJ doesn’t have a backbone, and didn’t effectively punish Microsoft to discourage them from doing it again. It is blatantly obvious to even the blind, deaf, dumb and dead that Microsoft is a monopolistic bully, that steals from others, litigates, rorts tax systems etc.
It’d be easy enough to fix Microsoft’s apple cart:
1. Force them to port MS Office to Linux/BSD
2. Force them to port Windows Media Player to Linux/BSD
3. Force them to port Windows MSN Messenger to Linux/BSD
4. Force them to open up the protocals for:
msn
smb
cifs
All office formats (inc. formatting)
Windows media codecs
They can still be in business! Anyone arguing that Microsoft would go bust by doing this is smoking high grade dope. All that would change is that they’d no longer have a monopoly, and that they’d have to *compete*. Gasp!!! That’s a foreign thing to Microsoft. Compete. Get it? Provide a better product, more innovation, at a cheaper price, with higher quality.
As an example aside, we all know that Microsoft failed to get the Sender ID thru via the IETF as a standard. What’s the be that Longhorn includes it? By market monopolisation, they’ll force the market to adopt this standard, even though it’s not open, even though it’s not adopted as a RFC. So, if Longhorn does release in 2007, by 2009 Sender ID will be an industry standard, purely because of the market domination of Microsoft Windows. Oh, and they’ll have thumbed their nose at the IETF. Not any unusual thing for Microsoft, it does it regularly.
Microsoft needs to be heavily fined for previous transgressions, and *real* things put in place to punish them, and ensure that they stay honest. The current US DOJ settlement, and monitoring is a joke. Nothing more, and nothing less.
Once patents are in in Europe (they will get in I hate to say), then Microsoft will launch a global IP campaign against OSS/FSF products. First to go will be Samba, then w32codecs, then libdvdcss. That will halt Linux and BSD interaction with Microsoft Windows (killing office networks integration). It will halt the adoption of Linux as a multimedia system. No sound, no video, who’ll use Linux or BSD? How many hidden patents will be used in this war to enable complete and utter market domination?
Things like DMCA/Palladium (aka TCPA) are going to legally ensure that there is no freedom. Governments want this, because they’ll then be able to indirectly control and monitor the populace. That’s why there is no resistance from the US Government on such anti democratic legislation. Democracy is dead, the true God is now money, followed closely by power.
Think about it. It’s not going to be pretty.
Dave
microsoft needs to get sued again, imo. They diddn’t really comply with the ruling. And perhaps with the next lawsuit (that is bound to happen) they should break microsoft into multiple companies. one company for the os division, one for the office division. one for the xbox, one for their media player, and one for internet explorer.
then certain things like direct x, should be standardised. that way any microsoft split company will be able to use direct x portions of code in their product. such as the xbox, or windows.
with things like directx, microsoft controls software development on ALL platforms. they control the whole market of games. so perhaps directx should be made into its own company, or made into something everyone can use, ie an open standard – just like opengl.
closed API’s that microsoft keep using are bad for the industry. they help microsoft keep games on windows and xbox. if everyone was using directx, and it was royalty free, the gaming industry would be much more competative. because any system would be able to use directx.
1. Force them to port MS Office to Linux/BSD
it wont be good, they will make it like crap.
2. Force them to port Windows Media Player to Linux/BSDh
same thing, they will make it like crap.
3. Force them to port Windows MSN Messenger to Linux/BSD
same thing.
4. Force them to open up the protocals for:
msn
smb
cifs
All office formats (inc. formatting)
Windows media codecs
I can agree with 4
what they REALLY need to do. is split microsoft up. as long as its in microsofts best interest to keep people on windows, so they can sell them office. they are gonna be monopolistic. if they were orderd to do office for linux they would make a pure crap version of office, that runs super slow in linux as a promotional sacrifical lamb to sell more of their own operating systems? you know why? because that means they wont have to make office for linux anymore because there was no demand for such a crappy product. Plus then, they can call linux slow.
office needs to be one company. why? so that the office company will try to improve its revenue by porting to other systems.
media player could still be included with windows – as long as the formats are completely OPEN and royalty free. That way everyone can use them. If everyone can use them, they aren’t robbing anyone anymore.
Quote: “media player could still be included with windows”
Nope, not unless Microsoft bundles other media players such as quicktime and real player with Windows by default. Same with msn messenger. Bundle gaim and amsn with Windows. Make them *just* as prominent as msn messenger and windows media player. See how many people will choose the Microsoft way then. This gives true choice. People say that Linux distributions are just as bad as Microsoft, because they include bundled browsers etc, that is true, but you get choice with Linux. Lemme see, i’m running Libranet 3, and I have (as browsers):
opera
mozilla
epiphany
galeon
konqueror
that gives choice to the customer, and provides proper, non-monopolistic competition. Competition based on choice and performance. That’s what Microsoft fears.
Dave
Intergration is important and microsoft think that this will make people buy its products. Time to make microsoft pay for UNIX print services @ 600 per user opps there goes the price of XP to 1grand. Gee even MP3’s are nicer than that. SUN step up and abuse your partner with Single sign on. Microsoft cant stand up to everyone bashing them.
ZFS is good
EXT3 is good
NFS is good
NEWFS is good
CIFS is ok
SMB microsoft edition sucks
SMB samba edition is ok
Is it legal if we all spam microsoft? with one mail each at a specified time?
Anyone remember the early nineties when IBM and Microsoft split up over MS Windows 3.x and OS/2 2.x?
At the time, Microsoft was practically giving MS WinNT development toolkits away, and IBM was making people jump through the hoops and pay through the nose for their OS/2 development kits. Or jump through their nose and pay through the hoop – big companies can be positively disorienting at times.
Guess which one won.
Now there are a set of print and file server protocols, available for Unix and Linux networks for free. There are a set of robust and secure distributed file systems, such as OpenAFS and Coda available, and even NFS is slowly getting more secure.
Microsoft is a software company. Microsoft is behaving like Napolean’s doctors were, while he was in exile in St Helena – the patient is sick, so let’s up his dose of arsenic. He’s sure to recover faster the more arsenic he’s got in his system.
I mean, Microsoft is betting the company on Longhorn. And they’re acting like IBM was acting with OS/2 – and as unapproachably arrogant as well. Greasing the slides for a quick trip into oblivion.
“So long, it’s been good to know ya
“This dusty ol’ dust is a getting me down
“And I’ve got to be drifting along.”
If you are reading this on windows machine – you have nothing to say, just shut up and get some work done..
In fact it costs you nothing, nada, zero in license fees.
If you are for example Microsoft and you want to have Reiser4 access in Windows, just hire 2 persons.
The first person downloads the source-code and looks how Reiser4 works, and writes down a specification which bits and bytes to be written where on the disk.
The second one gets that manual from the first one and implements a filesystem with that exact properties for Windows. Licence payments are not necessary for the reimplementation of ANY OSS protocol.
You could even let the whole work be done by one person, but the two-person approach is a better protection from inadvertedly copying code.