On Wed, 22 Feb 2006, John Kelly wrote:
What the license says is different from what you say your lawyers say.
Sounds like the water is not really poisoned, but people are so afraid
it's poisoned, they won't touch it.
After wading through the hysteria, there are only two problems with
what Microsoft has done wrt sender-ID:
1) the patent license is incompatible with GPL (but is otherwise
fairly liberal).
2) their spec (and implementation?) reuses SPF records and pretends they
describe PRA instead of MFROM.
Problem 1 is only a problem if you want to create a GPL licensed
sender-ID implementation, or use GPL code in one. The problem domain
is narrow enough, that it really doesn't hurt anyone. It just means
that Microsoft will not have to compete with the GPL when selling their
sender-ID implementations. Open source systems that want to implement
sender-ID can provide a special license for just the sender-ID module. The
module can be dynamically loaded (e.g. sendmail milter) so as not
to conflict with the license of a GPL MTA.
Problem 2 is a *huge* problem. That is why we filed an appeal. It
is cyber-abuse, pure and simple.
I guess Microsoft is reaping what they have historically sown. That's
a shame, I really like the idea of verifying headers.
Yes, sender-ID will coexist nicely with the other technologies if they
only address problem 2. The problem is, their mentality can't conceive
of "embrace" without it being followed by "extend" and "extinguish".
--
Stuart D. Gathman <stuart(_at_)bmsi(_dot_)com>
Business Management Systems Inc. Phone: 703 591-0911 Fax: 703 591-6154
"Confutatis maledictis, flammis acribus addictis" - background song for
a Microsoft sponsored "Where do you want to go from here?" commercial.
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