Open source proponents denounce Microsoft licensing program

The Microsoft Communications Protocol Program (MCPP) was envisioned as a way to encourage competition and promote interoperability between Microsoft’s products and Unix, Linux and open source applications. Whether the licensing program has worked as planned is a topic of hot debate, and the U.S. District Court in Washington plans to take up the subject for review on Sept 11.

Microsoft is calling the licensing program a success, with more than 40 companies, most undisclosed, licensing more than 200 Microsoft protocols for server, storage and security services. But six states and many open source advocates are deeming the MCPP licensing effort a failure in terms of promoting competition and interoperability.

“MCPP licenses are simply not a viable option for suppliers of open source products – the principal alternative to Microsoft in the server market,” states California’s assistant attorney general Kathleen Foote in an Aug. 30 legal filing the state made on behalf of California and five other states calling themselves the California Group. “These companies cannot utilize MCPP licenses because of their royalty provisions and other restrictions on the use of intellectual property.”

That view is echoed by open source advocate Jeremy Allison, lead software developer at SAMBA, the open source project that provides freely available code used for interoperability between Linux/Unix servers and Windows-based clients.

“We read the license,” says Allison about MCPP. “It’s impossible to release open source implementations of the product. You have to keep it secret. This defeats the whole idea of open source.”

Allison says MCCP simply “gives Microsoft a good control point” and “the licensing is a failure in terms of what regulators want it to do.”

For its part, Microsoft says SAMBA and others have reverse-engineered some Microsoft code rather than join the program(Allison calls it network analysis, not reverse engineering).

“They have chosen not to participate,” says Craig Shanks, general manager of Microsoft’s protocol program, about SAMBA. “The reverse engineering route is up to them. That’s a decision vendors might make.”

Still, Microsoft hopes SAMBA and other open source advocates will join MCPP. One goal of the program, in which licensed developers gain access to Microsoft source code, is to slow down the reverse-engineering trend.

Meanwhile, Microsoft last December started augmenting MCPP, which began in 2003, with so-called “plugfests” that invite licensees to its Redmond campus and give them the opportunity to work one-on-one in the Microsoft Interoperability Lab to test Microsoft protocols.

However, only 10 companies have shown up, according to Darryl Welch, Microsoft program manger. The next plugfest coming up in mid-September will focus on the security topics of authentication and certification services. Microsoft’s MCPP sometimes offers access to upcoming as well as established technologies, Welch points out, and is a way to properly implement Microsoft protocols related to security and network-attached storage.

Making progress

Some vendors that have joined the MCPP — which costs $10,000 to start and typically includes royalty payments — say they see benefits in it, especially as Microsoft puts greater emphasis on security protocols.

Security vendor Blue Lane Technologies says it licensed a dozen or so proprietary Microsoft protocols — including Net Logon Remote Protocol, Kerberos Network Authentication Service Extensions and Encrypting File System Remote Protocol — for its patch-management proxy appliance for enterprise servers.

Blue Lane’s engineers took the opportunity to work with Microsoft engineers in the Interoperability Lab to verify their understanding of the Microsoft protocols, test their products and examine the differences in SAMBA and Microsoft code. Blue Lane was the first vendor to complete the software tests, though there’s no special certification associated with that.

“We provide security for all Microsoft protocols and for open source protocols, including SAMBA,” says Allwyn Sequeira, senior vice president at Blue Lane, who notes SAMBA is found in enterprise networks. “These are not a replacement for each other. SAMBA is typically used to have Windows clients talk to Unix/Linux and vice versa.”

Sequeira says part of the protocol testing with Microsoft involved working with upcoming protocols that don’t yet have a 100% equivalent in SAMBA.

Dominic Sartorio, president of the Open Solutions Alliance, which has 22 vendor members focused on interoperability and marketing issues related to open source business applications, says MCPP may be useful in getting Microsoft to license things they might not want to license otherwise. “But we’re living without it,” he adds.

Sartorio says Microsoft’s attitude about open source isn’t as monolithic as one might think.

Although “a company like Microsoft looks at open source as a threat,” Sartorio says, his experience working in Microsoft’s NXT software-testing program and the Linux/OpenSource Software Lab that Microsoft now operates on the Redmond campus, “has been mutually beneficial.”

Business customers sometimes want to run open source applications on top of Windows, rather than Linux, and the Microsoft software-testing programs are supporting that, Sartorio says.

Justice Department thinks positively

In stark contrast to the views of the California Group, the U.S. Dept. of Justice is taking the position the antitrust effort is reaping gains in competition.

In a legal filing released in late August, the Department of Justice cites the rise of Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Apple’s Safari as just one piece of evidence that the settlement reached with Microsoft in 2002 has promoted competition and consumer choice.

However, the California Group — which consists of California, Connecticut, Iowa, Minnesota, Massachusetts and the District of Columbia — argues otherwise.

While acknowledging that Microsoft’s Web browser share appears to have slipped from 96% of market share five years ago to 80% today, the California Group claims Microsoft still maintains clear market dominance in PC and server operating systems. “MCPP is failing to yield any products that challenge, rather than enhance, Microsoft’s market share,” the California Group concludes.

Whatever the outcome of the court review in Washington on Sept. 11, the MCPP is likely to continue. Although the final judgments are scheduled to expire in November, the Department of Justice concluded it was necessary to extend some provisions related to protocol licensing until November 2009. Microsoft has agreed to that extension, which a court approved last year.