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The emperor’s new clothes

Microsoft posted today their new license for Sender-ID protocol (which grew out of SPF/RMX/DMP/DRIP/etc. work in the ASRG). It still requires a signed license directly from MSFT for each implementer . More so, the license states excplictly on the bottom that the information on licensors may be published publically. Others already raised the question of GPL-incompatability. The question is what happens now - will the IESG accept this license or not.

Interesting enough this takes place on the same day as Microsoft pulled out from another standards body affiliated with the UN. More at GrokLaw. I sincerely hope this is a coincidence.

UPDATE: Now the FSF/OSI folks have jumped in on this stating publically that this license is not compatible with the GPL and other open source license. However, the best quote I have seen on this comes from this eWeek article:

Allman also isn’t optimistic about Microsoft making Sender ID open-source friendly. “It’s pretty clear that it’s going to take an act of whatever deity Microsoft worships in order to get them to back down on the sublicensing issue. They made it absolutely clear to us that they were not even going to consider changing this, and the legal folks made it further clear that they would rather see Sender ID die than back down.”

Update #2: Larry Seltzer of eWeek published a very good opinion piece called “I Come to Bury Sender ID, Not to Praise It”. It reflects the thinking of many participants including myself. And I couldn’t say it better than Larry:

I feel sorry for the Microsoft participants in the process, principally Harry Katz of the Exchange Edge team, who I’m sure only wanted the whole thing to work and were restrained by persons senior to them, probably Microsoft’s vaunted legal team who did such a good job for them in the past. Of course, we all know what Shakespeare said about lawyers.

Tags: asrg, ietf, ipr, microsoft, open source, patents, senderid, spf —

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