[2333] in Kerberos
Re: Kerberos Version 5 Proposal
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ganesan)
Tue Nov 3 11:24:26 1992
From: bagout!socrates!bf4grjc (Ganesan)
To: tytso@Athena.MIT.EDU (Theodore Ts'o)
Date: Tue, 3 Nov 92 10:55:12 EST
Cc: kerberos@Athena.MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <9211030130.AA02870@tsx-11.MIT.EDU>; from "Theodore Ts'o" at Nov 2, 92 8:30 pm
ravi@socrates.bell-atl.com
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL8]
>
> From: bagate!socrates!bf4grjc (Ganesan)
> Date: Mon, 2 Nov 92 15:50:35 EST
>
> >
> > A short-term analysis might suggest that proprietary changes to
> > Kerberos would be (1) possibly cheaper to Bellcore and (2) more
> > profitable to the prospective vendor. However, Kerberos derives and
> > adds all of its value through being in a distributed environment.
> > Therfore, interoperability is extremely important --- which means that
> > open systems tend to be much more successful than proprietary ones.
> >
>
> I disagree that proprietary changes will be cheaper to Bellcore. Not sure
> of your rationale for saying this. It is far more cost efficient for the
> Bellcore client companies to whom Bellcore distributes stuff, if changes
> eventually become part of the standard, and are available in a standardized
> way of multiple vendors. Hence it will be cheaper for Bellcore (short-medium
> -long term) NOT to make ANY propreitary changes.
>
> The reason why I said it might be more expensive is that Bellcore was
> planning on asking a vendor to make said changes, on a contract basis.
> For example, I believe Bell Atlantic might bid on such a job (although I
> don't know if that's the same part of Bell Atlantic that you work for).
Bell Atlantic is looking to Bellcore to provide a stable, fully documented
version of Kerberos 5, via their contractor effort. I presume the same
holds for the other Regional Bell Operating Companies. No! We are not
planning to leverage our experiences for profit at this time.....
But if you replace Bell Atlantic by vendor X below:
> I suspect that Bell Atlantic would want to change Bellcore more money if
> the changes that they made had to made publically available, as opposed
> to making the changes *owned* by Bell Atlantic and _licensed_ to
> Bellcore, since that means Bell Atlantic could try reselling those
> changes to a third party.
>
Nothing prevents Vendor X from reselling his work in either case. Naturally we
would prefer to buy products (especially s/w where the variable cost is
very low), from a vendor who can spred his costs by selling in large
volumes.
Bell Atlantic is COMMITTED to Open Systems (nothing religous, its just that
we see plug and play open systems as the most cost effective way to provide
services to our rate payers) and would frown on any attempt by any vendor
to foist propreitary products that are incompatible with the standard, and are
not available from multiple vendors. In the absence of any significant
business motivation, we probably would not even buy it.
> Of course, there are companies, such as Cygnus Support, that make
> changes and improvements freely available as a general rule. But I
> don't know if all contractors would agree to such a provision without
> charging extra.
>
My personal take: The contractor should do whatever is best for his bottomline
in the long run. In this case, with the strong momentum towards plug and
play, I think making available enhancements is probably the best thing
from a cost perspective. Observe that this need not always be the case. For
instance if you and me built a secure, robust authorization that implemented
the latest greatest in typed access models, and authenticated responses over
a distributed environment. And if our product was easily administered,
incorporated support for multiple platforms, was well documented and easy
to install and use. THEN we should SELL it, not make our robust code available
for free!!!!
Ravi
--
*******************************************************************************
Ravi Ganesan e-mail: ravi@socrates.bell-atl.com
IS SAS Corporate Network Planning v-mail: (301) 595-8439
Bell Atlantic Fax: (301) 595-1341
Note: If your e-mail reply to me bounces, try sending it explicitly to
ravi@socrates.bell-atl.com instead of using the 'reply' feature.
******************************************************************************
