Personal Website of Yakov Shafranovich

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If you fail, try again

Having failed to push Sender-ID through the IETF, Microsoft is trying again - through the Federal Government. William Leibzon an extract of Microsoft’s comments submitted to the FTC:

The test of whether Sender ID or any other proposed solution is an open standard is not Whether it has been ratified through an open consensus-based process, but rather whether the proposal can be widely adopted - indeed many successfull industry standards are not ratified by as standard-setting organization.

Another words, screw the IETF and the FOSS community, if the proprietary industry adopts it, its a standard. Of course, they conviently “forget” to mention the incompatability with the GPL and the fact that the biggest four MTAs on the Internet might be unable to use it.

The sad thing is that the deadline for the comments has already passed, and only 43 comments were submitted, some of which aren’t very helpful and some downright crazy (Larry Rosen’s comments are of particular interest). But of course, just like the RIAA, if you fail to reach your goals through normal channels, lobby the government; which appears to be the case here with Microsoft. It remains to be seen what will happen during the actual FTC/NIST summit which is scheduled to be held on November 9th and 10th, during the week of IETF’s 61st conference in DC.

Tags: ftc, ietf, microsoft, senderid —

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