MS Escrow

[rarachel@prism.poly.edu (Arsen Ray Arachelian)]

Folks, we should keep one thing in mind.  Microsoft would love to be the
ONE software monopoly whose applications are on every computer..  If this means
kissing the NSA's fat ass, you can bet they will do so.

However, they need to achieve goal #1 first, which means that if they piss off
their users, they won't be able to do much, so the best thing to do is to tell
them outright that we are against any such thing as a software escrow and that
any attempt on their part to use anything but strong, uncompromised crypto will
result in an instant boycott of >ALL< their products, and that we'd rather
switch to Novell's DR DOS or OS/half before use MS Escrow.

Now I realize that they are UNLIKELY to be volunteering to insert any sort of
a escrow in any of their products, but knowing them, they'd probably
rather use cheap encryption than pay licensing fees unless they can get more
back.  Remember, they run a business, they're not in the business of giving
anything away to Uncle Sam or to Joe Bloe User.

However we should still make our voice heard incase something will change in
the future and the NSA would be twisting their arm.  We should demand open
crypto hooks to which we could attach PGP or anything we damn like.  A simpl
e fax sent to them from each of us will cause enough attention to make the
point.

I'm not advocating spamming MS's fax machines here.  There are only 700 or so
cpunx, and one fax each should be more than enough feedback for them to take
the poinot, no?  Anyone have a customer relations fax number?  or a PR fax #?

Now we should mention that we are aware that Ms Escrow is just speculation,
but that we want MS to know that we are adamant enough to not take any such
shit now, or ever.