[plug] Is Microsoft Ready to Assert IP Rights over the Internet?

[Andrew Furey]

On Mon, 08 Nov 2004 01:22:00 +0800, Muskie Teh Otterboi
<muskieratboi at yahoo.com.au> wrote:

> Wait. Lemme get this straight. MS is trying to say "We own the
> Internet"? (or at least the protocols?)

Just out of interest, this tactic was somewhat predicted way back in
Halloween 1:

-quote-
What the author is driving at is nothing less than trying to subvert
the entire "commodity network and server" infrastructure (featuring
TCP/IP, SMTP, HTTP, POP3, IMAP, NFS, and other open standards) into
using protocols which, though they might have the same names, have
actually been subverted into customer- and market-control devices for
Microsoft (this is what the author really means when he exhorts
Microserfs to "raise the bar & change the rules of the game").

The "folding extended functionality" here is a euphemism for
introducing nonstandard extensions (or entire alternative protocols)
which are then saturation-marketed as standards, even though they're
closed, undocumented or just specified enough to create an illusion of
openness. The objective is to make the new protocols a checklist item
for gullible corporate buyers, while simultaneously making the writing
of third-party symbiotes for Microsoft programs next to impossible.
(And anyone who succeeds gets bought out.)
-end-

Andrew

-- 
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