To add to the personal testimony called for by the chairs, I would like
to make the following statements:
1. In my professional capacity as a network analyst for a medium-sized
company (400+ employees), I use the GPL licensed Exim MTA. I believe
that since Exim could not directly include Sender-ID code itself, my
choices for implementing Sender-ID in my company would be to replace the
MTA or try to find a Sender-ID add-on for Exim. The first option
would entail significant expense and thus would probably fail a
cost/benefit analysis and therefore likely would not happen. The
second option may be impossible since such an add-on may never be
created and even if it is, the expense of adding a third party module
may fail a cost/benefit analysis. Based on this, I am pretty confident
that my company will never implement encumbered Sender-ID or at best it
will be a very much delayed implementation.
2. In my personal capacity as an Internet email user, my ISP is Primus
Canada, which uses the Exim MTA. Because of this, my ISP may never
implement Sender-ID since it would entail the same type of work as noted
above. In any case, an implementation would be delayed and it is
possible that if they had to migrate to a proprietary MTA, the expenses
they incur would be passed on to me and I would see my Internet costs rise.
3. Although I am not currently an active developer, I have done a fair
bit of programming in the past and given some spare time I may be
inclined to participate in a development project. I have in fact
contributed in other ways to a few existing projects such as Snort and
SpamAssassin. As my interests lie in security, email, and anti-spam,
it's likely that any such future development contributions would be
products that include MARID. However, I would not be able to work on
any projects that contain Sender-ID as I would refuse to sign a license
for it. My reason for doing so is based on my past assertion that
"royalty-free" does not mean "free" and that the benefit of being able
to implement Sender-ID is outweighed by the value of the rights that I
would be waiving, particularly:
- Despite not being a citizen of the USA, agreeing to be bound by US
Export Administration regulations
- Agreeing to only use the code to implement the Sender-ID specification
- Agreeing to give up all rights under the license if I sue Microsoft
- Agreeing to distribute my code only under a license that is not
"inconsistent" with displaying Microsoft's IPR notice
- Agreeing to distribute my code only under a license that does not
guarantee that all recipients of the code have the same rights
- Agreeing that any dispute be settled in the state of Washington
and waiving all defenses of lack of personal jurisdiction and forum
nonconveniens
- Agreeing that my name can be used as part of Microsoft's PR (by
being listed as a licensee of MS IPR on their web site or elsewhere)
Kevin