Web service EULAs

Frankly, in an area where much remains in the realm of promises and specifications rather than real products, I suspect attempts to make definitive performance comparisons of Web services development models are very premature. And I don't know if InfoWorld or any other publication can come riding to the rescue any time soon with benchmark tests of its own. It's not because the publications are afraid of the censorship clause (any publication worthy of the name would welcome the chance to challenge them). The unfortunate fact is that testing in a cutting-edge area like this can't be done fairly without each vendor's cooperation.

I spoke to Microsoft officials involved in the .Net benchmarking efforts and it's clear they are actually quite frustrated by the situation. They seem sincere in believing that credible benchmarks of current implementations would tell a good story for them. That may well be true (Microsoft has some obvious advantages as the one-stop supplier of all the .Net components), and I told them that I think Microsoft is shooting itself in the foot by bringing the censorship clauses of the database server world into the mainstream of Web services. Their response is that they don't really like the benchmark nondisclosure clause but they had to apply it to Windows 2000 to protect when the other application server vendors adopted censorship clauses. In other words, they need to "prevent disreputable competitors from fabricating bogus tests" as one Microsoft official put it last year.

Yet, as is so amply demonstrated by the .Net vs. J2EE benchmark wars, censorship clauses do nothing of the kind. In fact, they make it easier for competitors to stack the deck in their favor and then claim they couldn't do otherwise because of competitors' license restrictions. A competitor that does publish bogus test results will be far more vulnerable to defamation or false advertising charges than it will be to violation of an unenforceable clickwrap license term.

I'll remind readers of the notorious SoftRam 95, a product that was revealed to be basically nonfunctional only after a competitor went public with the benchmark results to prove it. Open public discourse about products simply isn't possible when anyone, even competitors, is expected to ask permission to speak. If Microsoft really wants the truth about Web services architectures to come out, its first step should be to eliminate these censorship clauses from all its license agreements.