Standards bearers

Mary Jo Foley AnchorDesk

Published: 19 May 2000 14:30 BST

Thus, it was no surprise last week when within minutes of Microsoft's lawyers' sending a note to Slashdot, the Linux free-for-all site, that the open software community was up in arms.

Microsoft asked Slashdot, in its role as ISP, to pull a handful of posts from its site that Microsoft said violated its end-user license agreement covering a proprietary extension Microsoft made to Kerberos. Kerberos is an Internet Engineering Task Force standard authentication protocol, support for which Microsoft built into Windows 2000.

That's all well and good. But instead of targeting their wrath at Microsoft for bastardising a standard, the majority of Slashdot posters went nuts on Microsoft for allegedly attempting to curtail free speech.

While it's true that all posters are entitled to their personal interpretations, why cry wolf? If history is any indication, Microsoft and other companies who play fast and loose with standards ultimately will cut their own throats.

After all, this isn't the first time (and definitely won't be the last) that Microsoft has called in the lawyers -- to its own detriment. Remember when Microsoft slapped a reporter with a subpoena last year for exposing proprietary company e-mail messages guarded by protective order that were instrumental in the Microsoft vs. Sun Java case? Microsoft later dropped its badly executed plot to reclaim its documents, but the PR damage had been done.

And Microsoft may be at it again, on yet another front, as Sm@rt Reseller colleague Deborah Gage tipped me this week...