spf-discuss
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Re: Sender ID (was Re: [spf-discuss] nobody @ xyzzy)

2006-02-22 13:49:37
David Mazieres (no direct replies) writes:
"Dick St.Peters" <stpeters(_at_)NetHeaven(_dot_)com> writes:

I've been a free-software guy for decades and don't like Microsoft
very much, but I think it's important to stick to the truth...

[Microsoft's licence] explicitly allows anyone to *use* Sender-ID
without a exectuting a license agreement.

Nonetheless, the license excludes a lot of free-software developers.
For example, I'm a professor who also happens to work on open-source
mail software in my free time.  I asked my university's lawyers
whether they could execute Microsoft's sender ID license, and the
answer was probably not.  The problem is that it requires the
university to license *all* of its patents back to Microsoft for
sender ID--including patents obtained by other research groups--which
the lawyers were extremely reluctant to do.

What the license says is different from what you say your lawyers say.
The license says that if you patent something that is *necessary* to
implement Sender ID, you must allow all Sender ID licensees (including
free-software developers) to use that something for the purpose of
implementing Sender ID.  You don't have to license entire patents to
anyone, not even Microsoft, and you don't have to license parts of
patents for any purpose other than implementing Sender ID.

The license defines "Necessary Claims" as patent claims that are
"necessarily infringed by implementing the Sender ID specification".
If you have such a patent, it requires you to grant a license "under
Your Necessary Claims to make implementations of the Sender ID
specification".

A developer considering implementing Sender ID will want the
protection of such a provision, so he or she can know that no patent
will emerge that prevents distributing his/her work.

Only if you want to use a patent to block other developers from
implementing Sender ID do you have reason to object to such a
provision.

IMO, given that there are such things as software patents, the world
would be a better place if more licenses required that you not use
your patents to block other developers' work.

--
Dick St.Peters, stpeters(_at_)NetHeaven(_dot_)com 

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