Those "communication protocols" are what Microsoft uses to implement AD....actually, they're not closed communication protocols, in many cases they're closed extensions to already available public standards
Those communication protocols are considered one of the reasons why Windows Server sells so much. Microsoft owns the desktop market, and the AD client built in in every windows desktop machine uses propietary extensions, so only windows server can be used as a well-integrated AD DS for windows clients.
This stops not just Linux, but any non-Microsoft OS. "only samba cares"? Samba is the software used by pretty much all the non-microsoft operative systems (including all the unixes - solaris, aix, etc) to interoperate with microsoft. If microsoft published those protocols, any non-microsoft server could be used as AD DS in microsoft networks. Microsoft obviously doesn't want that, and has tried hard to avoid publishing anything.
Documenting those extensions would not take microsoft "a year", specially considering that microsoft neccesarily has to have documented them internally. What microsoft needs to show the world is a RFC-like document explaining the extensions and/or propietary protocols used. Not certainly a lot of work for Microsoft.
It's funny to see how Microsoft is trying to look 'open' to get the ISO aproval for the OOXML standard, but when it's about the procotols that forbid non-windows operative systems from competing with windows server in the ubiquous windows networks.....microsoft tries all the possible legal tricks to avoid publishing it, even if they've to pay 500? millions.
Microsoft has used all kinds of excuses for not providing access to the server communications protocols that other vendors have said they needed to make their products interoperable with Windows Server.
We’ve heard it all: Documenting these protocols would require time (like years…). Microsoft would be harmed by having to make public its intellectual property. A fair pricing scheme needed to be determined. Making public the protocols would be redundant, as Microsoft already is providing other vendors with the required interop information via one-on-one licensing and interop deals.
Now that the Court of First Instance has overturned Microsoft’s appeal of the European Union’s antitrust case, Microsoft is finally going to have to deliver all required protocols and documentation for a price deemed reasonable. But who cares, at this point?
Samba and … Samba.
That point comes across loud in clear in a podcast on Groklaw with Jeremy Allison [above right], co-author of Samba; Volker Lendecke, a member of the Samba team; Georg Greve, president of the Free Software Foundation Europe; and Carlo Piana, the lawyer for Samba and FSF.
Greve noted that by the time of the September 17 Court decision, Microsoft had “bought out” most of the companies who originally wanted the protocol information, specifically Novell, Sun and the Computer and Communications Information Association (which represented a number of Microsoft’s rivals). As a result, the only vendor who has been advocating actively for access to Microsoft’s protocols is Samba.
This is a bit deceptive, however, as Samba is doing implementations on behalf of a number of vendors. Here’s Allison from the Groklaw interview:
“So the interesting thing… (Microsoft General Counsel) Brad Smith gave a statement just after the judgment was announced, where he talked about how the industry had changed and Microsoft was doing deals with Sun. Sun had now become a Windows OEM. They had the Novell deal, et cetera. What he didn’t say was that both Sun and Novell, their workgroup server implementation is Samba (laughter) which is being explicitly excluded from the agreements that they’ve done with Novell. (laughter) And IBM’s workgroup server implementation is Samba, and Apple’s workgroup server implementation is Samba, and… y’know. You go into Fry’s Electronics in the US and any sub-$5,000 NAS box you will find in the place is Samba. So essentially, anyone who actually really competes with them has been excluded from these agreements.”
And the idea that Microsoft could simply extend its existing Microsoft Communications Protocol Program (MCPP) to provide Samba with the required interoperability protocols and documentation is a sham, too, Allison said.
“(I)f you look at the agreement that Microsoft had done with companieslike Novell, and probably Xandros and Linspire — I’ve only seen the Novell agreement, I haven’t seen the Xandros or Linspire ones, the Novell ones are public by the way — you will find that they specifically exclude what Microsoft call in their legal documents “clone products”, which I think they include Samba among. So yeah, there’s this whole theory that they’re trying to set up that Samba is a clone of Windows and therefore is not available for protection.
“The interesting thing about the licensing is that I think what Microsoft will try and do… I believe this might have been what some of the discussions with the Commission have already been about is that they’re trying to say ‘look, we have a licensing programme already that we implemented in the US for the Department of Justice case” and that’s the MCPP, Microsoft Communications Protocol Program licensing program, and what they were trying to do is to say “Well, why don’t we just extend that to cover the server-to-server stuff and then we’ll adopt that in the EU and let’s settle the case.”‘ The problem with the MCPP is that it’s an abject failure in that if you look at the companies that are licensed under that program, and the license terms are explicitly designed to exclude free software, so they’re designed so there’s a per-royalty basis, there’s a time limit on the implementation’s validity - I think it’s about five years - there’s royalties, there’s per-seat licenses. There’s all sorts of methods to make this unusable in a free software implementation.”
The rest of the Groklaw podcast and transcript are definitely worth a read.
So, yes, while I did say I think Microsoft has changed some of its monopolistic ways, I would be the first to admit it has not changed them all. Microsoft’s stall tactics and word games around providing interoperability information is a case in point.
