Subject: Re: Motion to abandon Sender ID

From: "Anne P. Mitchell, Esq." <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2004 21:42:03 -0700

This may be naive in terms of the workings of the group, and 
protocol...but rather than abandon Sender I.D., why not contact MS and 
explain to them the concerns, and let them clarify?  Ask them to put in 
writing explicitly what their patent covers with respect to the items 
of concern (or, conversely, to put in writing expressly those things 
which the patent is warranted to *not* cover), and ask them to further 
rewrite the license to address and clarify those areas of concern as 
well?

They have obviously put a lot of time and effort in to this, and while 
I absolutely agree there are problems with things as they stand today, 
and fully expect MS, as any other company, to cover their investments 
and their asterisks, in any negotiation, and at this point this is what 
it is, it makes sense to say to them "here are the problems which keep 
it from moving forward - will you address those problems, or do we need 
to abandon it and move on?"

Yes, I said I didn't understand why we were looking at this *given the 
problems* when we had SPF which had no such problems, but now it's not 
clear to me whether they have been given an opportunity to rectify 
these problems; have they?

Anne

Anne P. Mitchell, Esq.
President/CEO
Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy
Professor of Law, Lincoln Law School of SJ

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From: "Gordon Fecyk" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2004 00:50:27 -0500

> This may be naive in terms of the workings of the group,
> and protocol...but rather than abandon Sender I.D., why
> not contact MS and  explain to them the concerns, and
> let them clarify?

I believe it is not in their best interest to do so or Harry and crew would
have released those clarifications by this time.

Knowing the GPL is designed exactly to counter the kinds of practices
Microsoft, Oracle and other [pure or mostly] software companies routinely
use, we should expect any Sender ID license will never be GPL compatible.
It's not going to happen.

The GPL is not the only open source license that Sender ID's terms run afoul
of, if I read the noise in MARID correctly.

And apparently some prior works, including the input documents for this
working group, could be subject to patents applied for.  That includes the
original SPF.

I see another Rambus in the making here, exactly the same concern I brought
up with the BOF chairs back at IETF 59, where I was assured the IETF didn't
tolerate such behaviour.

-- 
PGP key (0x0AFA039E): <http://www.pan-am.ca/[email-masked]>
Sometimes it's hard to tell where the game ends and where reality bites,
er, begins. <http://vmyths.com/resource.cfm?id=50&page=1>

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From: Yakov Shafranovich <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 02 Sep 2004 01:47:47 -0400

Yakov Shafranovich wrote:
> Anne P. Mitchell, Esq. wrote:
> 
>>
>>
>> explain to them the concerns, and let them clarify?  Ask them to put 
>> in writing explicitly what their patent covers with respect to the 
>> items of concern (or, conversely, to put in writing expressly those 
>> things which the patent is warranted to *not* cover), and ask them to 
>> further rewrite the license to address and clarify those areas of 
>> concern as well?
>>
>> and their asterisks, in any negotiation, and at this point this is 
>> what it is, it makes sense to say to them "here are the problems which 
>> keep it from moving forward - will you address those problems, or do 
>> we need to abandon it and move on?"
>>
> 
> I agree with Anne here - I want to do the same. If we can resolve these 
> issues and move forward, it would be very helpful.
> 

On a followup note, I sincerely hope that this quote is NOT entirely 
true (http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1639576,00.asp):

"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."

Yakov

---

From: Yakov Shafranovich <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 02 Sep 2004 01:44:42 -0400

Anne P. Mitchell, Esq. wrote:
> writing explicitly what their patent covers with respect to the items of 
> concern (or, conversely, to put in writing expressly those things which 
> the patent is warranted to *not* cover), and ask them to further rewrite 
> the license to address and clarify those areas of concern as well?
> 
> They have obviously put a lot of time and effort in to this, and while I 
> absolutely agree there are problems with things as they stand today, and 
> fully expect MS, as any other company, to cover their investments and 
> their asterisks, in any negotiation, and at this point this is what it 
> is, it makes sense to say to them "here are the problems which keep it 
> from moving forward - will you address those problems, or do we need to 
> abandon it and move on?"
> 

I would go a step further - I challenge Microsoft to participate in a 
conference call or a Jabber chat on this. Perhaps, if we can get the 
relevant parties together including Microsoft lawyers and lawyers from 
OSI and FSF, AND the policy makers at Microsoft, as well as members of 
this group, we can explain the issues to each side in a more clear fashion.

> clear to me whether they have been given an opportunity to rectify these 
> problems; have they?
> 

In general, delaying the license change until the last minute right 
before the last call period started does not sound like acting in good 
faith. I find it very hard to believe that highly paid lawyers at 
Microsoft took such long time to do the changes. But in any case, why 
not give them another chance?

On a related note, keep in mind that approval by this WG is only the 
first step. There is still approval by the IESG in the future, if ever, 
and that takes time as well. Plus the various appeal processes, etc.

Yakov

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From: wayne <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 02 Sep 2004 00:52:32 -0500

In <[email-masked]> "Anne P. Mitchell, Esq." <[email-masked]> writes:

> explain to them the concerns, and let them clarify?  [...]
>

Yes, Microsoft has been given plenty of notice about the problems with
their license and given many opportunities to address the issues.
Lawyers from the FSF and OSI have been working with MS lawyers for
*months*.

The hard deadline of Aug 23 given by the co-chairs for any revised IPR
license was actually the *second* deadline given to MS.  IPR issues
were discussed at the interim meeting this spring and at the IETF-60
session.  This is not a case of MS being ambushed by people who just
suddenly decided to raise concerns about the license.  Rather, this is
a case where MS long considered the issue and has drawn a line in the
sand and said "if you want SenderID, you must accept our license
terms.  That is our final offer."

So, here were are, almost to the end of the Last Call on these
Internet-Drafts for potential RFCs.  We are trying to determine if the
benefits of using the patent encumbered PRA algorithm is enough better
than the alternatives to outweigh the costs.

In order to advance the marid-pra and marid-core I-Ds, there needs to
be a rough consensus from this working group that they should
advance.  From what I can see, there is no consensus that they should
advance, if anything, there is a rough consensus that they should not
advance.  Of course, it is all up to the opinions of the co-chairs as
to whether there is a rough consensus.  As Phillip Hallam-Baker can
tell you, there are some "wonderful" stories about co-chairs of IETF
working groups deciding on the issue of rough consensuses.

-wayne

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From: Yakov Shafranovich <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 02 Sep 2004 02:19:31 -0400

> working groups deciding on the issue of rough consensuses.

Given that only five days are left until the end of the last call 
period, perhaps the chairs can tell us what they feel the consensus is 
as of right now. As for those "wonderful" stories, there is always 
appeals :)

Yakov

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From: Paul Iadonisi <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 02 Sep 2004 02:25:14 -0400

On Thu, 2004-09-02 at 01:47, Yakov Shafranovich wrote:

[snip]

> it further clear that they would rather see Sender ID die than back down."

  It would be nice to get a confirmation from Eric Allman as to whether
or not this article got it right or misquoted him.  Because if it is
true, I would like to know why the Sendmail, Inc. position on Sender-ID
posted opened with:

        "Sendmail, Inc. has worked with Microsoft to help them produce a 
        patent license that will be acceptable for ourselves, the IETF and 
        the open source community at large."

because the two statements are clearly not consistent.

  Please, if we are to assume participants in this list are acting in
good faith, then all members need to honor that.  If Microsoft never had
any intention of making this license FOSS friendly, then why wasn't that
stated from the beginning?
  I agree with Gordon Fecyk in this case.  I smell another Rambus.  And
I do hope the IETF follows through with what Gordon was assured of at
IETF 59...that this behaviour willl not be tolerated.  

And from http://www.imc.org/ietf-mxcomp/mail-archive/msg03750.html:

       "Finally, some participants have outright stated that they are
       interested only in the advancement of a competing specification
       to Sender ID while others have not said so much but have taken
       a similar tone. This is most offensive and counter to the notion
       of finding a consensus-based standard. Many individuals in this
       working group have worked very hard to find common ground, and
       this unilateralism is unfair to them. If it is your intent to be
       unwavering and steadfast in your opinion no matter the discourse
       of the issues, we ask that you disengage from this working group."

  If the article has it right about what Eric said and Eric has it right
about what Microsoft (and particularly its legal folks) said, then I'd
say the above statement about being 'unwavering and steadfast in your
opinion no matter the discourse of the issues' applies to this situation
quite readily.  (Though I'm not all impying anything about Harry, Jim,
or any other Microsoft employees on this list.)

-- 
-Paul Iadonisi
 Senior System Administrator
 Red Hat Certified Engineer / Local Linux Lobbyist
 Ever see a penguin fly?  --  Try Linux.
 GPL all the way: Sell services, don't lease secrets

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From: AccuSpam <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 02 Sep 2004 15:03:51 +0800

>       of the issues, we ask that you disengage from this working group."

I add my vote to this motion for reasons I previously stated:

http://www.imc.org/ietf-mxcomp/mail-archive/msg04008.html

and AccuSpam has no particular attachment to any competing standard for PER-DOMAIN anti-forgery.

I also find no major objection if Microsoft can eliminate the need to sign (fax or otherwise agree to) a patent license in order to distribute products which implement SenderID.  Else I think we should be patient to standardize on an alternative which is clearly in the public domain.  In the meantime, we have de facto standards, such as SPF, which can are gaining adoption (especially among anti-spam) and can protect senders who are being phished.

Additionally, the issue of deploying per-domain anti-forgery out to all senders is a complex one that is not completely solved with MSFT's PR apparatus and influence.

-Shelby Moore

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From: Andrew Newton <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2004 11:57:00 -0400

> as of right now. As for those "wonderful" stories, there is always 

The recent messages from Mark Lentczner and the Apache Software 
Foundation say a lot.

-andy