Earlier today Mr. Hardie, Area Director for the IETF Marid
Working Group made the following post concerning the
licensing issue:
http://www.imc.org/ietf-mxcomp/mail-archive/msg02748.html
In essence, the position is that with this filing:
http://www.ietf.org/ietf/IPR/microsoft-ipr-draft-atkinson-calleri
d.txt
Microsoft was in compliance with the IPR requirements.
According to Mr. Hardie, all that is required is:
"A refresh with the new name and some details on coverage
is warranted for clarity before the documents go to the RFC
editor, but that is a paper trail issue, not substantive."
It is Mr. Hardie's position that:
"The IETF is an engineering body, and it makes engineering
decisions. It cares about licensing only as it affects the
ability to implement and deploy a standard."
In particular he notes:
"The IETF has published standards with defensive patents
many times, and the use of a reciprocal/royalty free
license is a common way for contributors to protect
themselves from later claims while still encouraging the
creation of an interoperable, open standard. Trying to
persuade the working group that something is outside the
norm when the IETF IPR page is full of contrary examples
insults the intelligence of the group, as well as insulting
the contributors who are providing a royalty free license."
Subject to clarification, it seems the IETF will proceed to
consider Sender-ID, with the Microsoft license essentially
in the form found at:
http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/twc/privacy/spam_callerid.mspx
The question seems to be:
"Whether it can be shown from an engineering perspective
this will impair the ability to implement and deploy
Sender-ID as a standard?"
This is a very narrow question. It would be helpful if Mark
and Meng could speak to this issue.
Kind regards,
John Glube
Toronto, Canada
The FTC Calls For Sender Authentication
http://www.learnsteps4profit.com/dne.html
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