[Gllug] More Microsoft FUD

[Alex Hudson]

On Wednesday 07 November 2001 8:35 pm, you wrote:
> Surely, the whole point is that they have proprietised their "extensions"
> to Kerberos, therefore preventing interoperability. 

The closing of their extensions didn't prevent interoperability; that is a 
separate issue. One hopes that the final MS/DoJ settlement includes server 
protocols...

> Being "better than the
> standard" means "not following standards". We can all see nice ways to
> subtly improve the standards, but the point of standard protocols is that
> they are open, and that they are the same for everyone. Otherwise, no talk
> ...

No, in this case MS were pretty much right. They didn't just break Kerberos 
to stop people interoperating with it, they extended it massively to support 
stuff it should really have supported from the word go. MS Kerberos & other 
implementations interoperate fine; you just get the standard functionality. 
The problem is that breaking into an MS Kerberos domain is tough for other 
implementations because of the initial authentication problem: however; this 
is problem common to all Kerberos domains, not just MS ones. The Kerberos 
standard, as is, doesn't provide sufficient service to the standards people 
using NT Domains / Active Directory have come to expect. 

None of this is to suggest that I like this situation though: I just don't 
see any reason to knock Microsoft falsely; that's their game. We're better 
than that. Microsoft's anti-Apache benchmark studies prove it - Free software 
rules because a community can take criticism on the chin where valid and make 
things right; a company like MS needs to spin (doing anything less would 
probably invoke the wrath of the shareholders).

> I can't remember MS security patches being "immediately posted" to their
> website.

That depends what you mean by 'immediately posted'. I imagine as soon as 
they're finished they're posted immediately.

I suspect that's not what you mean though :) As I said - I agree, Microsoft's 
criticism here is pretty weak.

Cheers,
				Alex.

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