Microsoft is treating the authorization process as totally proprietary because authorization to use a Microsoft application requires a Windows 2000 Server. "If you want access rights to applications on Windows, it has to process its own authorization," says Boettcher.
Customers, like Morgan Stanley, that want to access basic functions such as file and print services from Windows 2000 desktops must purchase and run a Microsoft Windows 2000 Kerberos Server, even if they already have another Kerberos implementation in use.
For Hill, that amounts to Microsoft gratuitously tying the desktop to the server.
"Microsoft has created a system that forces Morgan Stanley and many other government and academic institutions to run Microsoft servers," he says. "These organizations now have to duplicate essentially the same data into two separate systems."
As Hill sees it, this way of implementing Kerberos shatters the notion of an interoperable "standard." And the licensing restrictions Microsoft has imposed on publishing the data-field information mean that it still isn't a standard at all.
"It's a clear demonstration that Microsoft has no intention of changing its business practices," says Hill. "It's using its monopoly on the desktop to force people to use its server."
