Please watch your followups, as this message is sent to multiple lists.
The purpose of this message is to clarify my plans for any deployment of the
Sender-ID specification in Courier (http://www.courier-mta.org).
Microsoft has made certain patent claims on the Sender-ID specification.
Microsoft has issued the IPR disclosures and royalty free license required
by the IETF. It appears that IETF's contemporary policies do not prevent
the sponsor/advocates from including patented IP material into
standards-track specifications, without even requiring the sponsor to
actually enumerate and identify their intellectual property; a mere claim of
the existence of some nebulous IP rights is sufficient, which can be
revealed at any point in the future, at the sponsor's discretion.
The current development version of Courier implements the original
SPF-classic specification, that predates Sender-ID. This will be rolled
into a forthcoming release. I'm quite pleased with the results so far --
there are a lot of classic SPF records in existence, as witnessed by my mail
logs :-)
It will not be possible for me to implement Sender ID in Courier. Courier
is licensed under the GPL. The FSF already flatly stated that Microsoft's
IP license is not GPL compatible. I reviewed the most recent version of
Microsoft's proposed IP license, and I've reached the same conclusion. For
this reason Sender ID cannot be implemented in Courier; Courier's
implementation will be limited to the unencumbered SPF-classic.
--
Sam Varshavchik
http://www.courier-mta.org
pgp1f0QBFzLfv.pgp
Description: PGP signature