From: Vivien M. Sent: October 21, 2004 11:27 PM
|It seems clear to me from lurking for the past months on
|this list that Microsoft intends to be seen (by the general
|public, the DoJ's antitrust division, politicians, Wall
|Street analysts desperate to see MS make money in a new
|industry, and whoever else they think cares) as the savior
|in this domain forgery issue. Their problem? SPF had the
|bad timing of entering the scene a few months earlier, and
|they obviously don't want to run the risk of the magical MS
|anti-forgery thing losing in the marketplace, which I
|suspect it would, given a level playing field. MS has had
|plenty of expensive, money-losing ventures in their
|history, and they don't really need another.
|
|So, what do they do? They take a couple pages out of the
|handbook of sleazy American legislative tricks, and start
|making generous offers with poison pill conditions, knowing
|fully well that people like you will see the poison pill
|condition and raise all hell. But, guess what? You, sir,
|are not the audience they are playing to.
|
|So, they wanted XML, because... whatever. They can't get
|MARID to follow the MS XML syntax, that's no problem. Going
|with someone else's syntax is a small concession to make.
|PR spin: "MS follows lead of standard body and shows
|willingness to compromise" (which implies "everybody else
|is being stubborn"). MS - 1, Everybody else - 0. So, then,
|they come up with the "conveniently incompatible with open
|source" royalty-free licence. That was a clever ploy. If
|you fall in the trap, well, they win, and if you refuse,
|the MS spin department can say "well, we offered them a
|royalty-free licence to our new Magical ID technology, and
|those communistic zealots with no respect for hardworking
|American businesses refused it." To the intended audience,
|this looks like MS - 2, Communistic Zealots - 0. To the
|Wall Street analysts still quivering after the Eolas patent
|debacle, it looks like MS is learning from what could have
|been a very painful hit (bottom-line-wise). And the various
|people in Washington DC who don't understand the
|intricacies of various software development models quietly
|swallow the MS party line: "a hardworking, taxpaying US
|corporation offered to licence its hot new technology for
|no royalties, and these zealots are opposed to this - the
|only reason for this opposition must be that they're
|against intellectural property rights because they're
|communists who believe software should be free when in
|fact, we create tens of thousands of good paying American
|jobs by selling software" Do not forget (look at copyright
|term extensions, and the proposed knee jerk responses to
|P2P, among other fine examples) that probably about 530
|members of the US Congress will happily go with anything
|that strenghten big corporations' IP rights without giving
|a second thought to the technological issues involved.
|
|You know who I think the real audience of this game is?
|Regulatory agencies and legislators.
|
|Microsoft, in its nearly thirty year history, made ONE
|massive blunder that almost killed it: they operated in the
|marketplace and ignored those fine people in Washington, DC
|(and Brussels, and everywhere else). They've learned from
|that lesson, and now, sir, I suspect they're going to turn
|the regulatory process into a way to further the MS agenda
|that you've so... ably, albeit bluntly ... described.
|
|In the modern world we live in (to paraphrase a villain
|from one of the last James Bond movies), lobbyists are the
|new armies and lawyers the new artillery, and you and your
|noble ideals have neither of those. MS has as many of those
|as is necessary to get the job.
|
|I think MS' strategy is two-fold: A) Convince everybody to
|adopt technology that MS has IP rights to. You, and
|everybody else, have seen through that, but you don't see
|the bigger danger waiting. and B) Convince the FTC or other
|regulatory agency (or Congress, or whatever) to mandate MS'
|anti-forgery technology. ISTR that the FTC already stated
|it would like to see anti-forgery technology deployed,
|preferably technology that the industry came up with,
|but... If the industry does not agree on something, the MS
|lobbyists will be like "Well, Mr./Ms.
|Senator/Commissioner/whatever, unless everybody uses the
|same anti-forgery technology, your rich banking campaign
|contributors will continue to be ripped off in phishing
|attacks, so it is in those constituents' interest to
|mandate a single standard."
|
|And what single standard exists? Well, only one has the
|army of lobbyists necessary to make itself widely heard in
|Washington, DC, and that's Microsoft's. So, the US
|government starts mandating use of MS' anti-forgery
|technology, which, as we already established, open source
|projects can't use. That means that whoever is subject to
|this new regulation cannot use open source software
|anymore, and who 'coincidentally' happens to be sitting
|there waiting to provide compliant products? Microsoft and
|its big-$$$ consulting partners.
|
|And then, well, Bill G. smiles and says "checkmate, Mr.
|Couzens and open source community." MS almost got itself
|destroyed by the government last time because they were
|naïve, but this time they'll use the government to destroy
|their competitors.
|
|Why do people like Meng try so hard to keep MS at the
|table? It's because they know fully well that once MS
|leaves, MS will turn all their resources to establishing
|their thing as the dominant one, so the smarter strategy is
|to engage in quiet diplomacy and hope to convince MS to
|make the licence open-source compatible (and back down from
|some of the other more outrageous things) in exchange for
|their PR department claiming they did most of the work on
|the standard and some Wall Street analysts adding a few
|paragraphs in their reports about MS' leadership in
|eradicating this horribly forgery problem.
|
|If MS and Meng and others can agree, great for MS, it'll
|save them millions in PR/lobbying expenses and their
|MSN/Hotmail side gains usable anti-forgery technology
|faster, but if you (and others with the same ideological
|mindset as you) manage to scuttle the deal from the SPF
|side, MS will get out the big artillery. You may think that
|by getting MS to go away, you'll be able to deploy your
|nice, open-standard, open source SPF quietly without
|interference from MS, but I think they're playing for keeps
|in this game and if they go away, it'll only be to reload
|their weapons. And you, sir, do not want to be the target
|of the MS political/PR machine.
It is fair to say that MS is an extremely powerful
organization, with significant political, marketing and
financial clout.
Will the Federal Trade Commission "grant" Microsoft an
American monopoly on the email authentication standard with
the collapse of MARID and the IESG decision to ask for
experimental proposals?
The MARID record is fairly clear and there is a significant
difference between an experimental proposal and a standard
track RFC.
In my view, if the FTC is left on its own, the short answer
is no.
Is it possible that Congress could be persuaded to grant MS
such a "monopoly?"
Anything is possible, especially if one political party
retains control of both the White House, along with both
the House and Senate after November 2, 2004.
Is it realistic? We have a number of forces at play:
* A very large organization like MS seeking a statutory
monopoly.
* The public which continues to be upset with onslaught
with spam.
* The financial community which is upset over the losses
being suffered through phishing.
* A number of different email authentication proposals,
with MS championing PRA and Yahoo! backing DomainKeys.
AOL supports SPF, while continuing to work with other open
standard solutions. AOL is part of a significant corporate
conglomerate.
Yahoo! has significant allies including forces in the
financial sector.
Neither SPF nor DomainKeys are encumbered with a license
which is not compatible with the Open Standards Alliance
model.
Further, an open standard proposal has been put forward
within this group which allows for mail envelope and
message header authentication based on SPF while ide
stepping the problems posed by Microsoft's Sender ID
framework.
In addition, work is being done by another group operating
under the acronym of CLEAR, which in my view holds
significant potential.
I appreciate Meng's desire for "quiet diplomacy."
Unfortunately the objective of moving ahead with an SPF
protocol which specifically supports Microsoft's PRA
proposal has caused significant discord within this group
and in my view left it floundering.
Sometimes, in diplomacy it is better to:
* Say "no" while leaving the door open, if the other party
wants to say "yes" after removing the "poison pills;" and,
* Move ahead with an approach which sets up an open
standard that can aid in the solution without the need to
rely upon the tarnished chalice.
John
John Glube
Toronto, Canada
For The Record, Will Microsoft Own Email?
http://www.learnsteps4profit.com/wme.html
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