Re: a fine kettle of fish

On Sat, May 13, 2000, Eric Eldred <eldred[_at_]eldritchpress.org> wrote:
>
> On Thu, May 11, 2000, John Lederer <johnl[_at_]ibm.net> wrote:
> >
> > So, here is the background. Kerberos is an open specification ...
>
> Some more info. Most of have had trouble discussing this
> on Slashdot.org, apparently because of some denial of
> service attacks on it (and other problems). However,
> it has become probably the most popular discussion thread
> on Slashdot ever, with 1,463 comments on the original post
> and hundreds on later threads. Few lawyers, though!
>
> Copyright to Kerberos is by MIT, I believe, and the spec
> and software were funded by the United States Government.
> The spec is licensed under the MIT license, similar to the
> BSD license, and not the GPL. More recently, the spec has
> been undertaken by the IETF, an open body that anybody can
> belong to, and Microsoft does. Some IETF members believe that
> Microsoft is not complying with the standard because it uses
> for its own purposes (and to prevent interoperability) one
> field in the API to contain data for Windows 2000 servers.

I believe this isn't fully accurate.

The Kerberos specification *document* is unlicensed but freely redistributable. The specification itself is, as far as I can tell, unlicensed.

MIT developed a Kerberos implementation in software which is licenced under the MIT license, as stated.

The name "Kerberos" itself does not appear to be protected by any IP -- copyright, patent, or trademark.

I've explored, as a layperson, implications of both the Microsoft/Slashdot dispute, and issues of protocol licensing, in a discussion post to Kuro5hin ("Corrosion", a weblog, http://www.kuro5hin.org/), and an article to same:

Comment "So what can they do to Slashdot anyway" http://www.kuro5hin.org/?op=comments;sid=2000/5/11/104835/261;pid=0;cid=112#112

Beyond Copyright -- IP for Protocols
http://www.kuro5hin.org/?op=displaystory&sid=2000/5/15/3194/41294

I invite discussion on either topic.

-- 
Karsten M. Self <kmself[_at_]ix.netcom.com>         http:/www.netcom.com/~kmself/
    What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
    http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/
GPG fingerprint: F932 8B25 5FDD 2528 D595  DC61 3847 889F 55F2 B9B0