On Tue, Oct 24, 2006 at 12:54:46AM +0000, Julian Mehnle wrote:
Well, I have been ranting about Microsoft plagiarising SPF before[1]. So
far, though, they have managed to avoid claiming authorship or other
rights _explicitly_. I still do not see them claiming rights _explicit-
ly_. As I see it, they are merely suggesting rights implicitly.
Initially I also wrote "implicitly", but I decided to change it into
explicitly before hitting send.
According to yahoo:
"Great progress has already been made on e-mail authentication worldwide,
with more than 5 million** domain holders adopting Sender ID as a best
practice today to help protect brands and counter spam and e-mail exploits,"
said Brian Arbogast, corporate vice president of the Windows Live Platform
Development Group at Microsoft.
[snip]
** Based on findings from MarkMonitor Inc.,
http://204.228.234.121/SPF/spfReport.htm?spfReportId=218 , and VeriSign Inc.
They hereby say Sender ID and SPF are one and the same. They claim
those 5,000,000 (I'm not disputing this number!) v=spf1 records
are theirs.
At the very least they claim that SPF is part of Sender ID:
Q: Where can I download the Sender ID specifications?
A:
[...]
RFC 4408 - Sender Policy Framework: Authorizing Use of Domains in “Mail From”
[...]
If Microsoft really wants to do the right thing, they are going to
announce, very soon, very clear, very often and very public, that
they do not own SPF, that their Sender ID is incompatible with SPF
and that the majority of those 5,000,000 domains have chosen to
implement SPF, not Sender ID.
If they want to _use_ SPF, fine with me. But
a) use the protocol as intended, not in an incompatible way
b) don't {give away|share|promise not to enforce} rights you don't own
c) don't claim SPF's successes to be your own
If Microsoft really wants to promote interoperability, then stealing
technology, changing it slightly but significantly, and claiming
success where there's none (as far as their own work is concerned)
is not the way to convince me.
To quote Wayne, probably quoting someone else (webster?):
plagiarism
n 1: a piece of writing that has been copied from someone else and is
presented as being your own work 2: the act of plagiarizing; taking
someone's words or ideas as if they were your own
I think #2 applies to this case; they count 5 million v=spf1 records
to their Sender ID "success". Sure, literally taken this is not taking
someone's words or ideas. But it is taking success away from someone
else and presenting it as their own.
Contrary to what Scott believes, I do think that they are claiming
the rights to RFC 4408 or, at the very least, deliberately try to
make the general reader believe this.
A small test: take the text on their web page, change Microsoft into
your own name, and modify the list of "Covered Specifications" into
anything Microsoft generated. Do you think you can get away with
promising not to assert any claims you may or may not own ?
I think you cannot. I would not be able to wave my rights to outlook
source code and then in the fine print state "should I have any".
Merely mentioning it on such a page implies that I think I probably
have such rights. And worse, people reading it will think these
rights are mine to give away, thus start using it freely. I would
be sued, big time.
Alex
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