"Koen Martens"Commented
On Mon, Sep 06, 2004 at 06:46:19AM +0100, Peter Bowyer wrote:
Chris Haynes <chris(_at_)harvington(_dot_)org(_dot_)uk> wrote:
Folks might be interested in this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3624798.stm
Thanks - a well-written piece in my view, much better than all the
re-hashing of 'Spammers use SPF already so it's dead in the water' that's
been published in the last week.
The article is incorrect though in that it reports that the license
creates problems for 'users', which is not true. End users are not
afflicted by the license, developers and distributors are. For the rest,
an excellent article.
There have been some opinions, voiced on the MARID WG list, that a licence is
required wherever the source code goes, so that a retail Linux distro which
bundled a Sender-ID-enabled MTA and included the source code WOULD require the
consumer (= end-user?) to execute a written licence with M$, and it is my own
suspicion that the distributor could be required to ensure that such a licence
was executed.
Also, M$'s overall scheme appears to require the use of the PRA algorithm in the
MUA, as well as in the MTA, so that all MUA source code would also need a
licence - i.e. all Linus distros which included a mail client would also need
the licence.
So, if this view of the licence is correct, goodbye anonymous FTP downloads and
goodbye shrink wrapped Linux. Quite an effective licence for anyone who wants
to compete with Linux!
The SPF-relevance of this is to ensure (a.k.a. hope) that SPF-Classic /
SPF-United are not tainted by the M$ patent claims.
Chris