Microsoft Introduces IM Licensing 574
prostoalex writes "The MSN Messenger ban of outside clients and cited security issues might be explained by yet another Microsoft move. The company's Internet unit, MSN, contacted third-party providers like Trillian and Odigo with a suggestion to buy access licenses. From the ZDNet article: 'Running an (IM) network is expensive,' said Lisa Gurry, group product manager for MSN at Microsoft. 'We can't sustain multiple other people's businesses, particularly if they charge for certain versions of their software. We're introducing licensing processes for third parties like Trillian.'"
I think the interests of the Open Source community (Score:5, Interesting)
Security? (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't seem to remember the last time a malicious programmer bought a license to write his exploit...
good they only have about $40 billion (Score:2, Interesting)
It's not like making it free would even dent their economy..
Just another exuse for "we want to be alone".. oh well
OSS Competition (Score:2, Interesting)
Gaim is free...I think this outlines the trouble Microsoft is having while competing with Free Software; if Trillian refuses the new liscense, will Microsoft be able to take actioin?
Because Trillian would be profiting monitarily from riding on the the Microsoft IM network?
Although, I suppose Trillian has more users than gaim does right now...
Re:I think the interests of the Open Source commun (Score:5, Interesting)
What are IM systems for? Communication. There is no logic in restricting the end-user's choice of interface. You don't see telephone companies selling phones that won't work unless you call someone with another phone made by them, do you? If you want to control and profit from a service, you charge for the use of the communication channel and allow users to choose their interface.
That said, no one will use a pay IM service unless that's all there is. They're trying to force people to use their interface, then add so many features that everyone uses it and AIM/ICQ/Yahoo/Jabber die off...and then, open your checkbooks!
Lost. So very, very lost. (Score:5, Interesting)
Numerous fights between MS and AOL ensured.
Fast forward a few years. Now MS has something. AIM is no longer a near monopoly, and MSN is paying the bill. Suddenly they don't want to be so open. What happened to their cries for "openness"?
Gee, what a surprise. Do they ever surprise? No, I don't think so, either.
I don't see anything wrong with this.. (Score:2, Interesting)
bullshit alarm (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I'm sorry to say this. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I think the interests of the Open Source commun (Score:5, Interesting)
No, but up until relatively recently you couldn't get your own phone at all, you had to lease them from the phone company. That way they could also make sure you didn't just plug in another phone without paying an extra fee for the other jack because you couldn't buy a phone at all. Today, who would think of paying an extra fee for each phone jack? It's free. There are still a lot of elderly people paying $5-10/month to lease phones they've been paying for for 30 years or more. It's sad that the phones are worth less than 1 month's fee.
IM is still in it's infancy so there will be silly restrictions like this.
Jason
ProfQuotes [profquotes.com]
Re:Lost. So very, very lost. (Score:2, Interesting)
That's odd, I don't know anyone on MSN anymore. I think I had as many as 2 people on there, once, a few years ago, that I actually wanted to talk to. Now, everyone I know (tech savvy to end-users) -- my mom, my sisters, everyone -- uses AIM. After all, its what AOL users use. I guess someone uses it...
(Perhaps it doesn't help that I pretty much mandate that anyone who wants to talk online gets and uses AIM. Then they stick with it.)
Otherwise, I won't disagree with you. Clearly, one unified/open/interconnected chat network would benefit all end users. I hope that this backwards act by Microsoft will causes their network to (continue?) downhill...
Re:I think the interests of the Open Source commun (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: i'm sorry (Score:5, Interesting)
Bad analogy...the people who made the roads were paid to do so; Microsoft was not paid by anybody to build their IM network.
as soon as you open up the roads, you can't say (100 years later) that only fords can drive on them.
If Ford owned the road, then they sure as heck could do that. It's their property, they can do with it as they wish. If Microsoft wants to prevent any client other than a MS-licenced client from accessing their network, then so be it.
Put yourself in Microsoft's position for a minute (yes, I know it's a pianful thought, but try it anyway). Do you want somebody else to profit while you maintain the infrastructure at your own expense?
Consider this: You build a road and allow people to drive on it as long as they pay a toll. This toll pays you for the cost of maintaining the roadway. Now, some people don't want to pay the toll, so they simply drive through the toll gates; an easy thing to do, since you don't have any gate arms or anything to stop them. Eventually people simply stop paying the toll voluntarily, so you install gate arms to enforce the toll on the road.
MS simply put gate arms at the toll booth, forcing you to pay the toll, which in this case is a piece of your desktop for banner ads.
Re:Time to make your friends switch to Jabber. (Score:5, Interesting)
Are you going to set up and maintain a Jabber server for all of your friends to use?
Everyone piling off MSN and onto jabber.org or jabber.com is not the answer. For Jabber to work, people must run their own servers.
Centralized messaging sucks [slashdot.org], but decentralized IM will never work for the masses unless it's peer-to-peer and "just works".
Re:Interesting... (Score:2, Interesting)
At the same time, I'm sure they justify (well, externally) the lack of Linux support to insufficient market presence. Going by that logic, the use of their network by Linux users should be insignificant, right?
Re:AOL already tries to stop 3rd party clients (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesingly enough, if licenses are being sold, MS has a fire lit under them to a.) keep it up and running and b.) to keep it working.
I don't see the BFD about licenses either. I'd rather read that MS wants money to log in than to read that MS is constantly mutating to keep people off, not unlike another monopoly Slashdot hates.
Ah well, it's about MS, there's no such thing as the silver lining.
Re:What about non-profits? (Score:4, Interesting)
AOL, bless it's little soul, at least has the excuse that they preexisted the internet and are simply trying to hang on to life in a world that has made an end run around their bread and butter.
I think the head of MS's Office division put it rather succinctly when they went after WP and Lotus:
"We want our fair share of the market and we consider that fair share to be %100."
They feel much the same way about the internet and MSN is their overt attempt to get there.
They're kinda used to getting what they want too, by hook or crook, as it were.
What's their share of the Office Suite market these days?
Mind you that they'll find the internet a bigger piece to try to chew, but they'll give it their best shot.
KFG
Duh! Centralization is a bad idea for IM! (Score:5, Interesting)
If there was some way to get ISP's to start setting up Jabber servers for their users, then people wouldn't be dependent on Microsoft's whim's.
Re:What about non-profits? (Score:3, Interesting)
The first group are making money off of Microsoft, while clearly the second group are not, although it could be said they're indirectly adding value to the likes of Red Hat Linux.
So it seems pretty obvious what MS is trying to do here. Kill the IMs and lump the open sourcers in too for good measure. Open source IM projects by definition are not likely to be able to pay, but MS does it under the guise of being fair and reasonable. It's funny that MS were the most vocal complainers when AOL told them to take a hike for pretty much the same thing.
Now, let's see how reasonable MS is prepared to be about this. If their stance is these third party apps are denying them revenue, how about suggesting that in order to use the network they must display MS adverts somewhere in the client and pay in that way? Although that would be disagreeable for open sourcers, it's better than being locked out altogether and it means you continue to benefit from their IM network even if it means a small increase of screen space.
Now, MS could turn around and say "open source allows people to remove the advert!", which is true. But even if someone produced a patch to hack the advert out, how many users would bother with it, and how many would use the one built and shipped with Red Hat, Suse etc? A few maybe, but the vast majority wouldn't be bothered as long as the ad was not obnoxious and perhaps used space that was blank anyway (e.g. the end of a toolbar). By way of comparison Netscape 7.x sticks adverts in its AIM client and the
Still, I don't hold out much hope. This looks like an opening salvo for Microsoft to fuck over the Linux crowd good and proper. With that in mind, perhaps the Linux distributors, Jabber and other interested parties should get their act together and offer a viable alternative. You can bet it will still need advertising funding, but at least it wouldn't be going into Microsoft's pockets.
Re:Can't afford??? (Score:4, Interesting)
1) 40b liquid in the bank is theirs, not yours. They earned it, you didn't. Bitch all you want about them having poor market ethics, monopolistic practices, etc. in an attempt to set things straight, but saying that because someone has something you don't they should support you is the logic of a common theif.
2) They fix their software and they do useful things, otherwise they wouldn't be in the market. Compare Win95 to XP and tell me that they have been sitting idle.
3) The fact that you are a computer user bitching on slashdot about them, but have never spent a dime on any of their products kindof flies in the face of them being a monopoly, doesn't it?
They own a bunch of servers that make MSN Messanger possible. They can do whatever they want with them. If you want to give a whole bunch of server resources away for free, go right ahead, but being as you don't, stop bitching that they don't want to either.
Re:What about non-profits? (Score:4, Interesting)
Isn't that a little premature? This seems like normal behaviour. Start off with a small fee (is it small?), then once they're locked in, pump up the price, eliminating unwanted competition and bleeding cash from the rest.
As they say, put a frog in hot water and it leaps right out, put it in cold and boil slowly and it will die.
Re:I think the interests of the Open Source commun (Score:5, Interesting)
If you don't want to pay the fee, use a service that doesn't have one. However, be aware that if too many people switch over to the free alternatives, the IM service provider may have to charge a fee to recoup the extra expense of handling all the extra people.
its about blocking linux/*bsd etc access (Score:5, Interesting)
MS messenger is available natively for windows & mac. It's available through plugins (gaim, kopete) on linux/bsd. Gaim/kopete wont be able to license ms messenger. So the only change this will bring is that linux/bsd clients no longer have a ms messenger protocol: effectively linux & *bsd access will be blocked on the msmsngr network.
MS integrated messenger in windows to build momentum. The moment they have a significant market share they lock down the protocol and start to license access to their users. I'm interested in talking to people who use msn, not in using the protocol, I could care less what protocol is being used. But now MS forces me to start emailing all those people who use MS messngr that they either have to get another IM account or they wont be able to chat with me through IM anymore. SO now they all have to get a yahoo account, download the client, configure, install, blah blah blah stuff they can totally do without. Thank you Microsoft.
I can't run windows or mac because they dont have the applications i work with.
Well, let's just close up shop, then. (Score:1, Interesting)
TCP was not designed to verify the identity or origin of the application used to connect... by leaving a port open, and accepting connections, you're implicitly agreeing to communicate according to a protocol. You can't claim you didn't want me to connect, because your server permitted it.
It's like a storefront. You agree to let members of the public walk inside, even if you reserve the right to kick someone out later.
I know people like this "MSN servers belong to MSN" argument, but, if the Internet worked like that... well, we probably wouldn't be here right now. There are consequences attached to your choices: communicating on an open, public network, included.
Re:What about non-profits? (Score:3, Interesting)
Also see this article [about.com]
Re:Time to make your friends switch to Jabber. (Score:3, Interesting)
In fact, I'm going to write to my ISP and ask them to do this. Thank you for this inspiration.
Same story, different decade (Score:2, Interesting)
Because of this unknown flaw, Microsoft is forcing users of several older versions of its own MSN Messenger and Windows Messenger clients to upgrade to newer versions. Users that have to upgrade have been alerted via e-mail and will soon start to see notifications in their Messenger client, according to Microsoft.
Same story, different decade. There are bugs in the older versions of the product, but the newest version purports to fix these problems. The newest version costs money. Repeat ad nauseum. You can see this in a variety of Microsoft products; for instance: Windows NT has bugs, but is no longer being supported; users are urged to upgrade to Windows 2000 or newer. Maybe this is a bad example, since NT is fairly old, so I'll toss a few more in for good measure.
Internet Explorer 6.0 SP-1 is the last standalone version of IE; subsequent versions will be built into future versions of Windows. IE6's support of CSS2 doesn't come close to Opera 7.x's, which makes it all the more difficult to develop for it according to the W3's specs. I'm sure CSS2 will be fully supported, and CSS3 halfassedly supported, in the next WindowsIE version, though.
Visual Studio
I like Microsoft products -- from both an end-user and developer standpoint, they're easy to figure out, well documented and suit a variety of my needs (gaming, programming, researching & shopping). But there's a fundamental problem with allowing any company to escape accountability for the problems it foists upon those who would deign to use it, in the guise of a EULA. Maybe it's time to take more drastics steps to change [business-standard.com] this kind of behavior.
Re:its about blocking linux/*bsd etc access (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:security reasons... right. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:IRC (Score:1, Interesting)
Sorry, but unless you're using a private IRC network IM protocols are so much easier.
Re:I think the interests of the Open Source commun (Score:3, Interesting)
Ah, another person who doesn't work for a large American company. Sorry, but I do work for one and we use Microsoft Messanger, not because it is the best, but because it works with all the rest of our Microsoft stuff. So how are my Linux boxes supposed to communicate? We need to look at options, but we also need to work in the real world.
nothing undisclosed about it (Score:2, Interesting)
They think everyone should start using SSL, to which I agree. To accomplish that, they'll be cutting off everyone who isn't using the new protocol yet.
(note that this has little to do with the issue of paying license costs for non-MS clients: gaim, for instance, already understands the SSL-based protocol)
Re:its about blocking linux/*bsd etc access (Score:2, Interesting)
If MS really believed that it was all about the infrastructure cost of running servers, perhaps they should have designed a system where someone else could run their own server, like IRC. Or change the protocol to allow this. But I don't really think that's what this is about all. Other vendors in the IM business threaten their complete domination, so they must be converted to a revenue stream (and controlled by a license), or be removed.
This is Netscape all over again.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Is this legal? Yes. But I would think this would be something the DOJ would pick up on.