On Aug 27, 2004, at 8:01 PM, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
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.
The IETF does not require a royalty free license.
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.
I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here.
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.
A couple of questions:
1) How do you base your decision on incompatibility? I ask this because
Courier uses OpenSSL and ships with a file called COPYING which states:
This software is released under the GPL, version 2 (see COPYING.GPL).
Additionally, compiling, linking, and/or using the OpenSSL toolkit in
conjunction with this software is allowed.
According to the FSF, the OpenSSL license is also incompatible with the
GPL. Additionally, is the webmail part of Courier licensed in a
different way? Would there be issues using it with Apache since the
FSF also considers the Apache license to be incompatible with the GPL?
2) Based on my limited understanding of Courier, it seems that the only
document in the Sender ID docset that needs to be implemented directly
into Courier is the SUBMITTER ESMTP extension. The encumbered portions
of Sender ID, -core and -pra, could easily be implemented in a separate
module using the courierfilter interface. Are you unwilling to
incorporate the unencumbered SUBMITTER even if a core/pra courierfilter
were available?
3) If somebody were to patch Courier with Sender ID and distribute it
with such modifications, would you take legal action against them?
4) You have stated above that you believe Microsoft's claim is
"nebulous" with regard to rights being claimed. Your release notes
state "Implemented Sender Policy Framework checking on the From:
header. Be sure to read the documentation and understand the
implication." Since checking of the From: header is listed in the -pra
document, are you concluding that this is not encumbered by Microsoft's
claim? If so, how did you come to this conclusion?
-andy