On Wed, 2004-10-13 at 21:33, John Glube wrote:
So why persist in a flawed plan. It makes no sense. Rather
set up a situation which forces Microsoft to brave the cold
winds alone, without any comfort from you or others within
the open source community.
I want us to do both things at the same time.
For instance, pulling the PRA scope out of Unified into a separate
document, which was started during MARID, does just that.
But imagine if even the mere *definition* of the PRA was put into a
draft all by itself and submitted to the IETF, with the current set of
documents for Unified being adjusted accordingly, after all our
remaining arguments are incorporated.
Then almost exactly as Unified is structured today, you could have a
central Unified draft, a draft defining the PRA all by itself, a draft
for sender_agents :-), and a draft for each scope, such as HELO,
MAILFROM, and PRA/SUBMITTER.
Technically you're not supposed to submit a draft until you *really*
mean it to go through. I would *guess* that Meng and Mark L can figure
out some way to do the equivalent of submitting the whole slew of drafts
with a "hold-this-until-MS-submits-a-decent-patent-license" hold placed
on the PRA draft.
Let's assume for the moment that there is in fact some way to
effectively do the same thing as submitting a set of Unified drafts
while keeping a hold on the PRA-scope until MS comes up with a decent
patent license.
If that were true, would such a strategy address your concerns?
It seems to me that doing such would not only allow the unencumbered,
(or at the very least less encumbered) methods of forgery detection
we've been discussing to be addressed by compliant implementations, but
that it would also mean that more of Microsoft would have to come to
realize that it will only be able to convince the rest of the world to
even consider the PRA scope if they offered a better patent license.
(That's IMHO true even now, but it would be clear even to Microsoft
manager- and lawyer-types if there could be in some sense an explicit
hold on the PRA scope.)
With the PRA scope so completely uncoupled like this, and completely
held back only because of licensing issues, that's effectively saying to
Microsoft that their pet interest can immediately go through once they
offer a decent/useful patent license.
IMHO, that's a much more positive way of framing the issue, as it not
only lets us continue to uncouple technical from legal aspects in any
remaining arguments among ourselves, but it makes it clear that the PRA
scope isn't going to go forward without a better patent license, while
allowing Microsoft to remedy the situation pretty quickly.
--
Mark Shewmaker
mark(_at_)primefactor(_dot_)com