[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: Microsoft's Role in the XML Community (WAS RE: Important: The SAXC+
Ahh.. I understand now. They broke the spirit of the agreement to provide full interoperability. That is the sort of thing one documents and publishes in the interest of the community of users to ensure all know that if these features are used, *all warranties are null and void* :-). The trick in the long haul negotiations of standards is to understand full wall-to-wall interoperation is not usually sustained and tweaking (particularly performance) is necessary. We end up writing a lot of language into our contracts over this. In short, while there are typically 1.25 ways to meet most requirements we see, a lot of haggling can happen over a quarter. And as with the Java cup, if they aren't fully interoperable, it is Microsoft's responsibility to show its customers precisely where, and obligating them to that responsibility is part of the purchase of the product. An average shrink wrap buyer can't do that, but large institutions can, do, and must. Making language available to those institutions for that purpose is something MIT can do for its community of users. Len Bullard Intergraph Public Safety clbullar@i... http://fly.hiwaay.net/~cbullard/lensongs.ram Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti. Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h -----Original Message----- From: Richard L. Goerwitz [mailto:richard@c...] Sent: Friday, June 16, 2000 3:56 PM To: Bullard, Claude L (Len) Cc: XML Developers List Subject: Re: Microsoft's Role in the XML Community (WAS RE: Important: The SAXC++/C/COM Muddle) "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" wrote, re Microsoft's role: > They have a role in the XML (more precisely, Kerberos) > community which they fulfilled by working with MIT on Kerberos. I'm not sure we're speaking the same language here :-), but to your point about the legality of Microsoft's behavior: Microsoft worked with MIT on Kerberos--an open standard that allows network clients of heterogeneous kinds all to leverage a single central authentication service called a KDC. It is a platform-neutral proto- col, and the KDC and clients may run under any operating system you want them to (at least in theory). Microsoft's "enhancements" actually break interoperability. If you use Microsoft's version of Kerberos, it becomes difficult, e.g., to use an MIT KDC with W2K clients. My suspicion (unconfirmed) is that the engineers at Microsoft were as miffed about what happened as the higher ed community now is. Anyway, whether they were right or wrong in a legal sense, the fact is that there was a deep sense of betrayal, not only to the people involved, but more generally to the cause of open protocols and standards (of which XML is one). My point is merely (vis-a-vis David Megginson's comments) that if a some Microsoft engineers return phone calls, and seem interested in what you're doing, this doesn't really tell us much about how all the high-level business decisions will pan out as far as XML and the XML community go. So there is cause for hope here and cause for concern. We should simply be wise. -- Richard Goerwitz Richard_Goerwitz@B... *************************************************************************** This is xml-dev, the mailing list for XML developers. To unsubscribe, mailto:majordomo@x...&BODY=unsubscribe%20xml-dev List archives are available at http://xml.org/archives/xml-dev/ ***************************************************************************
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