ietf-mxcomp
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Re: Obstacles between us and the finish line

2004-07-14 16:19:53

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Shevek wrote:

I request that any protocol standardised by the IETF be entirely free of
license restrictions in order that implementors clearly understand their
right to implement the protocol. I specifically oppose the adoption of
SenderID as a standard since it imposes licensing terms on the user. 

I completely and entirely second Shevek's point.

Especially in a domain as critical for the entire Internet community as is 
email exchange and delivery, I believe that IETF should never even consider 
adopting as a standard any protocol which implementation could be encumbered 
with any kind of patent or license restriction.

Such a standard must be public domain, free for anybody to comply with, use or 
implement without any kind of licences or constraints from any entity, in any 
kind of MTA or software itself governed by any kind of license, among which 
Free Software licenses and the GPL.

License restrictions/obligations on such a protocol would quite probably 
forbid it from being implemented and integrated into most if not all of the 
mainstream open-source MTAs, which would make this new "standard" basically 
useless.

So I request that either parties currently claiming IP rights about any aspect 
of the protocol that will be part of the standard officially decide to put 
these into the public domain, or that any aspect of the protocol that is 
encumbered with known IPR claims should be removed from the future standard.

That's all.

- -- 
Michel Bouissou <michel(_at_)bouissou(_dot_)net> OpenPGP ID 0xDDE8AC6E
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