Re: [DotGNU](slashdot) Microsoft dumps hailstorm ?

[Barry Fitzgerald]

On Thu, 11 Apr 2002, Norbert Bollow wrote:

> A failure of "Passport" would/will(?) be a much more serious blow
> to them.  Unless Microsoft succeeds with that, all their current
> cash cows will die a slow and painful death through competition
> from Free Software.  I would predict that if they have to, they
> will use up to half of the money that they have in the bank on
> trying to make "Passport" stick.  (The other half would be spent
> on expanding into areas of business which are not so vulnerable
> to competition from Free Software, such as all kinds of
> entertainment.)
>

I gleaned from the article that Passport was one of the Hailstorm services
that was having it's implementation altered.  The article called it
"Persona".  However, it basically described most of what passport does.
It also listed prior passport supporters like e-bay who now no longer
support passport.  I tend to believe that passport is at least partially
rolled into this decision - and if it isn't, the decision signals future
problems for passport in any case, because the market forces sited apply
equally to passport.

The article was still very fuzzy.  I will be seeking independant
verification of this story.  For a second I thought it was April fools
day.

But, in either case, all this does is make me feel a bit better in general
about the future of Free Software.  DotGNU may stand in contention with
MS, but it stands on it's own as well.  If MS was no longer explicitely an
adversary on the webservices auth front, it in no way lessens the impact
of this project.

        -Barry