From: Hallam-Baker, Phillip
<...>
Your biggest problem here is not Microsoft, it is the spammers
and the people they pay to read these lists and stir up
trouble.
I couldn't disagree more. It is rather offensive to suggest that anyone who
takes a position against Microsoft is doing so at the spammers' bidding.
That is much like Mr. Ashcroft's suggestion that anyone who disagrees with
President Bush is doing the bidding of El Qaeda. What the two positions
have in common is that both are from organizations who are bent on total
control, have total disdain for the process of democracy and hate the idea
of consensus.
With the amazing recent show of bad faith put forth by Microsoft by a)
saying they would rather see the whole proposal die than change the
sub-licensing language and b) including all of our prior SPF work in their
patent application, it is totally clear where the problem lies. Giving some
individuals the benefit of the doubt, we may choose to believe that the
Microsoft people who worked with Meng and others had good intentions.
However, the people who make decisions at Microsoft are a bunch of ruthless
liars who will be satisfied by nothing less than the destruction of the open
source software movement.
Your consistent defense of Microsoft, Phillip, paints you in a particularly
bad light, considering all that has occurred. If you want to hitch your
horse to that rotten wagon, be my guest. Frankly, you have a lot of nerve
labeling the hardworking volunteers who belatedly noticed that their work
has been hijacked by a well-known corporate thief as agents of spammers.
Nothing could be further than the truth. As an employee of VeriSign, I
suggest that your objectivity and credibility in this matter are both near
zero.
As a suggestion to the majority of others out there who seem to be aware
that Microsoft has again tried to either take over or destroy yet another
open source initiative, the best course of action is probably to
scrupulously avoid the parts of their patent that we know contain Microsoft
IP, like PRA. Furthermore, I suggest that we intentionally exclude
Microsoft from participation in the rest of our work unless they make up for
their past abuse by coming up with an open source compatible license and
dropping any and all IPR claims including SPF. There is no way we can stop
them from implementing and selling their broken PRA scheme to a few large
customers, but it will not penetrate the open-source world, which happens to
control the mailers that most of the Internet runs on. In this one unusual
case, due to Microsoft's lack of market penetration in Internet-facing
MTA's, we are actually in the driver's seat and we can afford to ignore
these thugs. We don't need them, but they actually need us. That was the
case when the merger was first proposed, but the key people in the SPF camp
failed to appreciate that fact and we subsequently gave away the store.
Hopefully, we can learn from the mistake and deal with this company
appropriately.
Before making kneejerk posts to the list take a few moments
to think about whether someone has been deliberately pushing
your buttons to make an issue out of something unimportant.
You won't see the people responsible on the lists, but I
have seen enough evidence that convinces me that they have
been at work making sure that every disagreement obtains the
widest possible readership.
A reasonable person reading the list archives might easily conclude that as
an employee of a subsidiary of Microsoft, you have been nothing but an
apologist of theirs and have bee instrumental in derailing our work.
This is one of the reasons I would never have choosen the IETF
as a venue voluntarily. A consensus process is always vulnerable
to a denial of service attack.
In case it has escaped your notice, this is an IETF crowd. Contrary to your
recent suggestion on the MASS mailing list, the IETF is not irrelevant and
industry groups like OASIS are not suitable models for open standards
development. If you don't like the consensus process, you're out of luck,
since that's built into IETF rules and the culture of the people on this
list. I don't think it's a stretch to say to virtually everyone here does
agree with the consensus approach, so stop complaining about how it is less
efficient than the alternative of corporate control. Democracy and
consensus are very messy to deal with. However, the results have
legitimacy, which is more than you can say about the alternatives. That is
why we all are willing to put up with it. Everyone with an interest has a
voice here, even you.
--
Seth Goodman