Jonathan Gardner wrote:
<RANT>
You know, I've been patient, well mannered, and on-topic on the
MARID list since I first posted at the beginning of last call, but
I've got to agree with your last post to MARID: this process has
disgusted me, too. I keep saying it, and I'm going to keep saying
it, that THREE LAWYERS have stated that this license is incompatible
with many FOSS licenses (including the GPL) and ZERO LAWYERS have
said otherwise. There's been significant deployment problems
presented to the MARID WG because of this, and yet it I fear that it
may still move forward as a standard. We'll see, I guess. Last call
ends in a few days. I, too, hope the MARID WG comes to its senses.
I find it interesting that no one has contested what the lawyers
have said regarding this. It appears to be being ignored. PHB is
right about one thing, if I'm paraphrasing what he's stated
correctly...that the IETF is at risk of becoming increasingly
irrelevant. I think maybe what's need is a threat of a split like
what happened with the W3C not long ago. Though the W3C is not
ideal, it's certainly better than the IETF in its current form.
</RANT>
Sounds an awful lot like what the general feeling was during the XML
debate.. Keep repeating the fact that SenderID cannot be implemented
by GPL and perhaps all Open Source implementations, and that the
only way MARID can proceed is to either ignore Microsoft's IP claims
or to drop Sender ID and pick up SPF again. I believe that the MARID
group in general feels much like you do and I believe that Sender ID is
now irrelevant because it will likely be dropped.
I have been trying my best to stay well-mannered too, on the IETF list, and
to give the big shots a wide berth. Whenever one of the chairs/co-chairs is
called on evasiveness, you see a lecture, letting the person in question
know it is not his/her place to tell the chairs what to do. Sigh.
Personally, I have a hard time understanding how MARID can even consider
adopting anything without the IP claimant giving full disclosure on the
scope of its claim (legally, technically, and otherwise).
Someone came knocking on my door, saying, "I want you to adopt this new
world-standard, but I am not going to tell you what parts of this invention
(ahem) I plan to patent, so you have no real way of knowing what your legal
consequences are for using it, but you have to trust me anyway, and sign a
license no less," I would then very politely, but equally decidedly, tell
that person what he can do with his proposal.
But hey, in the world of IETF I am small potatoes. So, I am just gonna sit
back and wait this one out, and hope that enough people will exercise their
common sense and abandon Sender-ID in its current form.
- Mark
System Administrator Asarian-host.org
---
"If you were supposed to understand it,
we wouldn't call it code." - FedEx