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Re: TECH: use fetchmail algorithm to select header address to verify

2004-09-06 15:17:13

John Levine a écrit :

The widely used fetchmail package includes a section of code that
determines the most likely responsible party for an e-mail message.
Its algorithm is similar to PRA but not identical.

This part of fetchmail was added in about 1996 and has been in daily
use since then by thousands of users all over the world during the
past eight years.  The fetchmail code is under the GPL, but as far as
I know, nobody claims proprietary rights over its algorithms.  Eric
Raymond, whose name is on the 2001 copyright notice in the file,
doesn't.  Since it was published so long ago it's unlikely that any
claims are yet to surface.

This finding is excellent and the idea is very smart. IANAL, but I believe
this is clearly and doubtlessly old enough "prior art" in determining the
purported sender of a message by checking the presence of a succession of
defined headers in an email, no matter what exact headers are used, this
is blatantly similar to the PRA method.

I believe this should probably be enough to invalidate any pretention from
MS of owning the "property" of such an "invention", and probably breaks
the validity of their (yet undisclosed precisely) patent claim.

(Anyway, even if this is really good news on the PRA standpoint, I still
personally technically much prefer that we should stick to 2821 MAIL FROM
as Classic-SPF does.)

-- 
Michel Bouissou <michel(_at_)bouissou(_dot_)net> OpenPGP ID 0xDDE8AC6E

paléogallicisme : style "vieille France"


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