You do not have any idea who is acting in bad faith here. Accusing
people of being dishonest because of who they work for is not
acceptable.
I am not sure who that was meant to refer to, but I don't believe I
have accused anyone of being dishonest. Microsoft's internal
documents (the Halloween documents) said years ago that they would try
to use patents to hold back their free software competition. If I
understand correctly, that's precisely what they have proposed to do
here. (If I am factually mistaken about part of this, please show
me.)
I made a small surmise that Gates had planned to put that general
approach into effect on the spam issue. I acknowledge I have no proof
of that; if you prefer, we can suppose that Microsoft stumbled blindly
across the opportunity. Either way, the danger is the same.
A previous message on this list alluded to the idea of linking free
programs with a non-free library that would carry out Microsoft's
sender-id proposal. This would not solve the problem of exclusion of
free operating systems, because this is a non-free solution. Free
operating systems cannot come with, or recommend the user install,
such a library. (Such linking would also violate the GNU GPL if done
with a GPL-covered mailer.) Freedom-lovers, caught between the
Microsoft license and the specification, would have to try to break
out in whichever direction offered the best chance of escaping with
freedom intact.
However, since Microsoft's aim (as stated in those documents) is to
hold back the competition from "Linux" rather than to attack freedom
as such, this loophole could make the plan ineffective for Microsoft.
That argument may carry weight for convincing Microsoft it is not
worth while to insist on that license.