I was ready to send this last night, but I sat on it to give myself time to
review and see if it's really what I want to say. Now, following the
announcement that the WG is to be closed, it's perhaps even more appropriate.
I certainly don't want to start a flame war over who is at fault... I realize
that the WG had lots more problems than just the IPR issue. But the IPR issue
is an important one and I want to go on record with my thoughts, in case it
benefits future working groups faced with "encumbered" options.
I previously wrote to the group saying something like "I would rather have
MS on board than not. While I don't like the "contribution" being
encumbered, I also see some advantage to having MS as a partner."
I would like to revise my statement. After reviewing the MS patent
applications, I found to my disappointment that it covers a lot more stuff,
even stuff that MS clearly did not "invent". If this patent pending
becomes a real patent, I would need a license from MS to implement Sender
ID, SPF, DMP, RMX, and probably even DomainKeys.
To MS I say: shame on you, for trying to take credit for other people's ideas.
Shame on you for taking a "microinvention" such as PRA and trying to use that
to take over all email sender verification world-wide. Shame on you for
misrepresenting the license as compatible with open source until the very last
minute. Shame on you, Harry and Jim, for your name is on that patent
application which claims credit for the inventions of others. If you are
really serious about getting people to use PRA or any other part of Caller ID,
place it completely in the public domain, or at least go out of your way to
make sure the license is acceptable to all, especially open source developers
and distributors. If you are really serious about wanting to participate in a
working group, go back to your corporate masters and explain to them that
everyone else in the group will be contributing unencumbered ideas for
everyone's mutual benefit, and MS will be the only one at the table looking to
increase its own portfolio.
To the rest of the WG I say: we have been fooled once by the likes of MS;
let's not let it happen again. We should be *very* wary of any "idea" that
comes to us encumbered. If someone really wants to contribute their ideas,
let them contribute them completely to the public domain, or let the burden
of proof of acceptable license be upon them before their "invention" is
given any discussion time, let alone selected for inclusion in a proposed
standard. We should be wary of any license that is not exposed and
reviewed, and we should be wary of any IPR claims that refer to unpublished
patent applications or other secret documents. We should go out of our way
to favor free solutions, and only consider encumbered solutions when there
is an obvious benefit not available in the free version. And we should
alert other working groups to the dangers of encumbered property. Some of us
may find our way into other working groups and I hope we will keep IPR in mind
if we do.
For myself, I will continue to work on this problem and be a part of this
group. My focus will be on making sure that an unencumbered solution is
available, such as SPF with varying scope and other alternatives. I have
always been a strong supporter of SPF and I will continue to work on trying to
make it (or something like it) available as an RFC (or at least as an
experimental RR if we can't get anything to the RFC stage).
Also, if I have any influence in the matter, I will try to make sure PRA or
anything poisoned by MS *doesn't* make it to PS stage, though this is a
lower priority; I'm sure the public is capable of voting with their feet if
an unencumbered track is available. And who knows? Maybe our wishes will
come true, their patent app will be denied, and nothing will really be
encumbered anyway. In that case MS will be thwarted in the larger crime of
stealing everyone else's work, and will only be guilty of the lesser
misdemeanor of wasting huge amounts of our time with legal discussions when
we could have been talking about technical, tactical, and strategic issues.
I would also like to thank everyone who contributed time and energy, ideas
and inspiration, collaboration and compromise, and other manner of blood,
sweat and tears, and did so without any thought to protecting their
"rights" to certain dubious "property". I guess it's true that you never
really find out the value of something until you find it conspicuously
missing.
We have a good group of people and I hope this list is allowed to
stay open -- if not (or if you choose not to stay on the list for your own
reasons) please consider spf-discuss as an alternative forum.
--
Greg Connor
gconnor(_at_)nekodojo(_dot_)org
Everyone says that having power is a great responsibility. This is a lot
of bunk. Responsibility is when someone can blame you if something goes
wrong. When you have power you are surrounded by people whose job it is
to take the blame for your mistakes. If they're smart, that is.
-- Cerebus, "On Governing"