A.P. Lawrence

Microsoft just can't help itself

(Traditional format)

Fri Aug 27 16:50:35 2004 Microsoft just can't help itself
Posted by Tony Lawrence
Search Keys: microsoft,mail
Referencing: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1639880,00.asp

As the link above explains, Microsoft just couldn't get away from its own greed and has effectively scuttled the "Sender-ID" concept for dealing with spam email. Perhaps, as Larry suggests, they really thought they they were so damn important that they could bully their way through, but I suspect it's just innate greed and stupidity: they don't know HOW to do anything that wouldn't have their lawyers fingerprints all over it.

Now of course some corporate apologists will point out that lawyers are necessary, and even "giving away" something can still land you in deep trouble. Yeah, but isn't it funny how Microsoft doesn't seem to worry too much about that when they do one of the thousand other things that have dragged them into various courts? In other words, when there is money to be made, well, charge right ahead and let the shysters earn their pay for a change. But for a simple thing like this where they could have played along with everyone else, oh no! - we can't be involved unless it's OUR license and OUR patents.

Well, with every offense intended, I agree with Larry: we'll do just fine without Microsoft. A protocol will be developed, it will be GPL'd, and if Microsoft wants to try to mess it up to give themselves advantage, I hope they find themselves in court yet again. Or better yet, just give it up, Bill: your email servers are too complex and often insecure anyway, so why don't you just get out of the business? Yes, trash Exchange and tend to some other knitting. Very few would miss it.

Psst - Wanna work for yourself?

Comments
CommentsBlog1071 :

"...we'll do just fine without Microsoft. A protocol will be developed, it will be GPL'd, and if Microsoft wants to try to mess it up to give themselves advantage, I hope they find themselves in court yet again."

Something that many Microsoft sycophants seem to have forgotten is that the computer industry was flourishing long before Gates and Allen started selling Micro-Soft BASIC. I started working with this stuff in the late 1960's and even though IBM was the big bully at the time, they did not have enough power to force their notions of interconnectivity on the industry as a whole. It was a good thing, too! Otherwise, we'd all be dealing with SNA, bisync modems (ugh!) and EBCDIC instead of ASCII.

As for Gates not liking the direction the sender ID conference was heading: TS! He's going to be forced to accept the reality of today's distributed computing environment -- which is based on industry standards, not Microsoft standards.

"Bill: your email servers are too complex and often insecure anyway..."

You can double that in brass!

Microsoft's notion of innovation is to take something relatively simple -- a mail transfer agent, for example -- and try to make it do things that are totally unrelated to its original purpose. Exchange reflects the environment in which it runs: complex, unstable, insecure and very bloated. Given the remarkable stability of UNIX/Linux and typical MTA's like Sendmail and Postfix, I simply cannot fathom why anyone would fork over wads to cash just to get Exchange. Of course, I don't worship before the Microsoft altar, so I guess I'm just one of the unwashed, ignorant multitude.

--BigDumbDinosaur



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