On Tue, 2004-08-24 at 13:48, Eric Allman wrote:
| Taking this into account and reading Eric Allman analysis
| (http://www.imc.org/ietf-mxcomp/mail-archive/msg03500.html), it
| seems the most common free software licence, the GPL, is
| incompatible with Microsoft licence on SenderID.
I didn't say that. I said that _some_ people may believe this, but
there is also some significant reason to believe that they are
incorrect, including statements from both Eben Moglen and Lawrence
Rosen, both of whom are lawyers. As near as I can tell, the question
of GPL compatibility is quite ambiguous at this time.
A few years back, working within a different standards body developing a
standard for a storage device, there were deliberations regarding how
data would be referenced. A device manufacture holding a patent for an
existing scheme made a very similar offer to the group. This
contractual agreement was honored until the rights to the intellectual
property were transferred to a media manufacturer after production
became established. Suddenly, reasonable terms were refused other media
manufacturers. Media quickly tripled in price. At the time, there were
better schemes that could have been used. : (
At least, this was regarding a device in competition with several other
technologies, and where a breach in this promise (in spirit at least)
only affected the profits of about half a dozen manufactures. Email is
not divided into small independent segments of an industry however.
Email is likely one of the most pivotal network and business
applications that exists. I would hate to be lured by false promises of
Sender-ID, into acquiescing this application to a corporation.
-Doug