John,
Thank you for putting forward your suggestions.
After Anne Mitchell made her initial post concerning the
Microsoft license, I sat down and re-analyzed the patent
license and reviewed the status of Sender-ID for my
personal benefit.
The conclusions I reached were:
* Reject Sender-ID because of the patent license, given
certain technical drafting issues and a lack of knowledge
about the formal patent application.
I realized that I had missed certain issues in my first go
through of the draft license and FAQ.
* Allow Sender-ID to proceed, but on a conditional basis,
subject to field testing and resolution of the issues
surrounding the patent license and the exact nature of the
claimed intellectual property.
I also felt I did not have enough knowledge about how
Sender-ID would actually work in the wild to support full
approval at this juncture.
(The issues surrounding the implementation of the text
record by large corporations as reported to this list,
along with subsequent comments made about the design,
simply highlighted the difficultly for me.)
Upon balance my inclination was to go with the second
option of conditional approval.
In making these comments, I want to be clear that I still
consider Microsoft has done a good job in the FAQ and draft
patent license.
I attribute no bad intent to Microsoft. The negotiating
team which presented the FAQ and draft patent license to
this WG was carrying out their task, to fully protect the
organization's interests while being fair.
However, after going through the material for a second
time, after Anne rang the alarm bell, for which I am most
grateful, as her stance took courage, I personally
concluded the draft patent license did not go far enough.
As to SPF, because it was not formally before the IETF, I
came to no conclusion other than to note, even though a lot
of work has been done with SPF, from inquiries I made large
scale testing was required before one could consider SPF as
a full standard.
(I realize some folks will probably consider the last
statement the equivalent of heresy, but...)
As to CSV, I will simply state having read through all of
the online discussions along with the drafts, I concur with
your analysis and suggestion.
For these reasons, I support your suggestion that both
Sender-ID and SPF be granted approval as experimental
standards.
I agree that any approval of Sender-ID as a full standard,
in addition to being conditional upon testing and the like,
also be subject to satisfactory resolution of the issues
surrounding the intellectual property rights and patent
license.
I repeat, from my perspective my stance is not meant as a
criticism of the Microsoft negotiating team.
Because of its size, Microsoft is easy to attack. Microsoft
is simply a large group of individuals working together to
achieve common goals.
The individuals involved do take great pride in achieving
their common objectives and rightfully so.
Balancing the competing interests is not an easy task. This
is why I fully support the concept of conditional approval
for Sender ID as an experimental protocol.
This will give the parties involved the time needed to sort
through the thorny issues surrounding the draft patent
license, while allowing for large scale testing of Sender
ID. In turn this will ensure, on full roll out, any rough
edges have been worked through so resulting in a better
result for all concerned.
John
John Glube
Toronto, Canada
The FTC Calls For Sender Authentication
http://www.learnsteps4profit.com/dne.html
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