Wireshark · Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] Licensing/Distribution Question

[Richard Sharpe <rsharpe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 8 Sep 2003, Pia Sahlberg wrote:

> In case the protocol is so secret that the source code can not be 
> distributed, there is no need to distribute protocol dissectors to third 
> parties or customers either.

I don't think that patenting a protocol is intended to keep it secret. 
Rather, it is intended to allow the patent holder to charge anyone for 
using the protocol.

Think of being charged everytime you use SMTP, or POP, or whatever, or, at 
least, paying a few cents to the patent owner for every app that uses the 
protocol.

In my view, everyone should avoid the protocol like the plague.

There is speculation that Microsoft will do two things with the successor 
to the SMB/CIFS protocol so they can control it totally and thus gouge 
their customers for more:

  1. Patent the protocol(s) to allow them to go after reverse engineers
     with the big hammer of the law.

  2. Use end-to-end enctyption to make reverse engineering that much 
     harder.

Regards
-----
Richard Sharpe, rsharpe[at]ns.aus.com, rsharpe[at]samba.org, 
sharpe[at]ethereal.com, http://www.richardsharpe.com