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Re: In favour of Sender ID (was: DEPLOY: SPF/Sender ID support in Courier.)

2004-08-30 17:07:52

"Paul" == Paul Iadonisi <pri(_dot_)marid(_at_)iadonisi(_dot_)to> writes:

    >>  Even if Sender ID is incompatible with the GPL [2] -- and I'm
    >> skeptical that it is except under the most extreme
    >> interpretations --

    Paul>   And we have yet to see a convincing legal argument (or
    Paul> *any* legal argument) from an attorney posted to this list.
    Paul> I'd like to know what Anne Mitchell (on this list) thinks of
    Paul> her legal analysis being called extreme by a non-lawyer.

Ok, here's my argument:

(1) Imagine you don't sign the patent license.  In that case, the
    license clearly has no effect on you.  The question is, does the
    existence of a patent claim prevent you from distributing under
    the GPL anyway.

    It is possible to interpret the GPL such that it does, since you
    are not in a position to offer rights to redistribute, although
    it's not clear (to me) that this is what the GPL intends.

    This may even be the correct interpretation of the GPL, however I
    call it an 'extreme' position because under that position it is
    also unlawful to distribute the Linux kernel, since it seems
    likely from recent reparts that there are a substantial number of
    patent claims against it.  In fact, this is likely to be true of
    most non-trivial GPL'd software.

(2) Now imagine that you _have_ signed the Sender ID license.  The
    Sender ID license doesn't require you to place any restrictions on
    the recipient of the software, as far as I can see the situation
    with GPL compliance is no different to (1)



    -roy




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