All,
Crypto-related standards (a field crippled with patents) often use the
very same method to allow interesting (but potentially infringing)
algorithms. See RFC 2246 for instance. You do not object against it
because it mentions the patented IDEA?
To be honest from what I can see there doesn't really need to be a
specification for PRA at all as it merely formalises the correct
interpretation of RFC2822 compliant headers.
"This document describes an algorithm that allows one to determine who
appears to have most recently caused an e-mail message to be
delivered. It does this by inspecting the headers in the message.
[RFC2822]"
PRA could just as easily be replaced by a requirement to interpret headers
in accordance with RFC2822,
Marid core 4:
"Determining the Purported Responsible Address
The purported responsible address (PRA) of a message MUST be
determined using the algorithm described in [PRA].
If the Sender ID check is being performed by an MTA as part of
receiving an e-mail message, and the PRA algorithm cannot determine a
PRA, then the message SHOULD be rejected with error "550 5.1.7
Missing purported Responsible Address""
This could be redrafted as
"Determining the domain responsible for introduction of the message into
the messaging system MUST be in accordance with RFC2822."
and "ver-scope" could be redefined to refer to a definition of the senders
domain written in refrence to rfc2822 alone.
It would then be the responsibility of the implementor to deal with their
own IPR issues, though what a can of worms would be opened if a patent
could be taken out on any algorythm implied but not explicitly stated by
any RFC.
It strikes me that crypto algorithms are the product of much commercial
effort and the ends of ineroperability are better served by incuding them
in an interoperability framework than omitting them. This case is different
in that a party to an interoperability standard seems to have indicated
that they intend to seek patents based upon work done by the group and
which will probably affect implementations but will not be granted or
revealed until after the standard has been published.
d.
(p.s. I'm an Apache James PMC member)
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