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MS Releases License For Sender-ID
Posted by
michael
on Tue Aug 24, 2004 04:44 PM
from the embrace-and-patent dept.
from the embrace-and-patent dept.
NW writes "Microsoft published today a new license and FAQ for Sender-ID anti-spam standard being developed by the IETF's MARID WG (based on SPF). To use the license, a signed agreement with MSFT is required. Compatability with the Open Source Definition, the
Free Software Definition, the Debian Free Software Guidelines, and the GPL/LGPL licenses is already in question."
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MS FAQ regarding issue (Score:5, Informative)
Royalty-Free Sender ID Specification License
Microsoft Corporation
August 2004
Q1: What is the purpose of the patent license?
A1: The adoption of Sender ID is important for the industry and Microsoft wants to facilitate the
adoption of the standard by licensing its necessary patent rights on a royalty free basis and
encouraging others to license their patent rights that cover the Sender ID specification similarly
on a royalty-free basis. That is why Microsoft's license includes all of Microsoft's current and
pending patent rights that are necessary to implement the Sender ID specification not just the
pending patent application claims Microsoft is currently aware of.
Q2: Doesn't having a patent on Sender ID complicate the process of getting it adopted as
an IETF standard?
A2: No. It should not. There are dozens and dozens of patent rights that have been disclosed to
the IETF that may cover IETF standards. See http://www.ietf.org/ipr.html for a complete list. We
are not aware of any of these patents complicating the standards process especially where the
patent owner has provided an assurance that it would make licenses available on a royalty-free
basis with other reasonable and non-discriminatory terms and conditions as Microsoft has done
here.
Q3: Why is Microsoft asking people to take a license?
A3: In order to promote Sender ID, Microsoft is pleased to offer its necessary Sender ID patent
rights on a royalty-free basis but only to those who are also willing to make their Sender ID
patents available on a reciprocal royalty-free basis. The license is also important to Microsoft for
defensive reasons. The reciprocity provisions and the ability to reserve defensive rights for
Microsoft's implementations of standards are very important elements in our decision to
contribute technology to standards.
Q4: When do I need to execute a license with Microsoft?
A4: At this time Microsoft is only aware of pending patent application claims that cover its
submission of the Sender ID specification. Because Microsoft is not aware of any issued patent
claims, Microsoft does not require any one to sign a license with Microsoft to implement the
Sender ID specification or any part of it that is incorporated into IETF working drafts. In
conformance with the IETF IPR policy Microsoft has disclosed the existence of those pending
patent claims and has provided its assurance that if such claims are granted Microsoft will make
licenses available on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. Microsoft has also gone beyond
the IETF's requirements by clarifying that its licenses will require no fees or other royalties, and
further, to make a license available to early adopters who wish at their option to clarify their rights
with Microsoft with respect to early implementations. Typically patent holders do not make their
license terms available until after the standard has been adopted and until after their patent
claims have been granted, leaving early implementers to speculate as to the ultimate terms of the
license.
Q5: What do I need to do for binary and/or source code distribution?
A5: Many open source licenses require you to include copyright notices distributed in the code
itself identifying the authors of the code being distributed. Some open source licenses also
require you to include the license under which you received the code with the code that you
distribute so that downstream users of the code are made aware of the terms and conditions
under which they can use the code. Microsoft does not require any notice or other attribution
when you disclose or distribute your implementation in binary form. However, if you disclose or
distribute your implementation in source code form, we think it is important for you to include a
patent attribution (from sec. 2.2 of our royalty-free patent license) in your source code and in
close proximity to the license under which you make your sou
Re:MS FAQ regarding issue (Score:5, Insightful)
rights on a royalty-free basis but only to those who are also willing to make their Sender ID
patents available on a reciprocal royalty-free basis.
Gee, sounds almost viral to me.
W
Parent
Re:MS FAQ regarding issue (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:MS FAQ regarding issue (Score:5, Insightful)
Has anyone looked at the actual license to ensure that the patent reciprosity is limited only to Sender-ID? This thing could be a hell of a submarine patent reciprosity agreement, freeing MS to violate patents of anyone using email if it was worded carefully enough
Parent
Re:MS FAQ regarding issue (Score:3, Informative)
Take the tin foil hat off. Its a Standard reciprocal license agreement. Notice its the exact rights you get from licensing their patent. So how is this bad? All its saying is that you can use their patent if you grant them access to your patents on caller id.
Re:MS FAQ regarding issue (Score:5, Interesting)
Thanks, but I'll stick with the fool me twice, shame on me system. MS has proven time and time again that they play to win, and that their idea of fair play is whatever they can get away with. Wasn't that long ago they decided I needed to buy a second Windows license for every PC in my office because the one I bought with the computer didn't include a right for me to Ghost(tm) images onto it.
Fortunately, there's a lot of really sharp and really paranoid folks who understand the law better than me (IANAL, though I do work in IP protection); you just have to separate them from the really paranoid people who don't understand the law.
Parent
Re:MS FAQ regarding issue (Score:3, Interesting)
So now then you have a question to ask yourself:
Which is more important to Microsoft: Stopping spam or winning points against other developers?
If it's the former, then they're on the level.
If it's the latter, then they're going to use the l
Re:MS FAQ regarding issue (Score:3, Interesting)
What do you think?
They don't care about a few millions of dollars a year in this crud. It's all a tax write off to them.
They prefer raping over fighting
Re:MS FAQ regarding issue (Score:3, Insightful)
The grandparent post has a legitimate question and concern. You dismissed it like a fool. Tin foil hat indeed.
Almost . . . (Score:5, Funny)
Whew.. I almost thought I saw Microsoft and standard
used in the same sentence. That was a close one.
Parent
MS are hoarding patents? (Score:4, Insightful)
So everyone shares their patents with MS, but not with each other, MS gets all patent rights, and everyone else has to fend for themselves? Where is the strategic advantage for everyone to jump on board exactly?
Parent
Re:MS are hoarding patents? (Score:3, Insightful)
Is that so hard to understand?
Maybe some teen sitting in his bedroom things of "free as in beer" is more important than "free as in speech", but not all of us do. One of the main advantages of "free as in speech" is the ability to change and modify the software in any way I want, without spending $1 in time worrying if I am violating some license.
WHY the MS appologis
Re:MS FAQ regarding issue (Score:5, Interesting)
The above is a variation of MS propaganda against OSS; taking shots at OSS while pretending to answer a "question," failing to distinguish that they are comparing their license for a specification vs open source licenses for actual programs.
Anyway, I read most of the license and the sections 2.1 and 2.2 seem incompatible with most open source licenses that I am aware of. Why? Because both the patent and source code distribution license grants are explicitly stated as:
IANAL, but to me this means that if you are a recipient of a program under this license (from a party who accepted this license), you have no right to redistribute the source code unless you sign a separate license with Microsoft. This, in turn, means that the source code distribution license is held hostage by Microsoft - i.e. they may, at any time, change the terms or discontinue this license offer and no new developers (who have not agreed to the original license) would be able to redistribute the source of the existing open source programs implementing the specification.
Once this becomes popular, as Microsoft seems to hope, they may even (or at least have an option to) say - sorry, but we are no longer offering the "source code distribution" option with our new licensees, so sorry, really.
So, at the end, again they hope, everyone would have granted their patent licenses to MS, and MS would be in charge of the terms for the source code distribution.
This license is not compatible with OSS.
Parent
Where will this lead? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Where will this lead? (Score:3, Insightful)
It will just be implicit. You will send your e-mail and they will charge $0.05 to your account.
Re:Where will this lead? (Score:5, Funny)
Tracked by MS Passport, of course. Don't worry about getting your Credit Card out, MS already has it.
Man, I just love a good conspiracy theory!
Parent
Are they purposely shooting their foot? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Are they purposely shooting their foot? (Score:5, Interesting)
Outlook is the most popular email client out there, bar none (think how many worms targetted it). Most people who use Outlook use Exchange, at least on a frontend level (my company uses Exchange popping off a more secure backend).
Even if Exchange wasn't being used in the majority of servers, the mere fact that so many people use Outlook as a frontend will dictate whether or not this will be accepted (and, knowing MS, they'll find a way to tie this into Outlook). Think IE, and how many sites are custom crafted to it.
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Re:Are they purposely shooting their foot? (Score:4, Informative)
If your front end servers are not exchange, I can't see a reason why you'd want this, as licensed. The objective of spam is to be delivered. That's it. Once it hits your server, the objective has been completed, whether or not it's filtered by a second stage server is irrelevant.
Parent
Re:Are they purposely shooting their foot? (Score:5, Funny)
You mean like Windows?
Parent
Re:Are they purposely shooting their foot? (Score:4, Interesting)
People are wondering if Microsoft has any measurable quantity of email servers facing the real internet. Best practice is to put sendmail (or postfix or qmail or whatnot) between your exchange servers and the internet. Even now, people are proposing standards and practices that totally ignore how the exchange server functions, and the community for the most part doesn't seem to mind.
I think this is the "age of irrelevance" for Microsoft. The "real" internet doesn't even come into contact with Microsoft anymore. Companies don't have internet-facing Microsoft servers anywhere that I can tell. Those who do obviously aren't going to have much uptime. (Would you run a Microsoft server without a firewall between it and the internet?)
Parent
Re:Outlook has enough users to set new standards (Score:3, Insightful)
If word got around that MS was going to change the behaviour of Outlook to this, I doubt a great many corps will change over to this new Outlook. Many companies are still out there using NT4/Office97. Even if they did upgrade, it wouldn't be without first disabling this via a policy. Sure home users will get spooked, bu
Current Climate... (Score:5, Insightful)
What is stopping them from letting it catch on and then asking for $1 from each project?
Re:Current Climate... (Score:5, Insightful)
In the future, I'd recommend the IETF just make sure any standards it endorses includes a poison pill for would-be patenters contributing to standards, that if it changes the rights of patentees in the future, after it's become a standard, to restrict them in any discriminatory way, that it must pay the cost of developing the next, non-compatible(yet non-infringing on the patent) standard.
Let's face it, IBM wouldn't write compatible technology, because they'd have to cross-license their patents to Microsoft in order to get it, but neither can IBM afford to have a product that's incompatible with an IETF standard.
I'm all for rewarding the developer of a technology for doing useful work, I'm all against technologies being discovered useful only once the dollar signs come in. I'm pretty sure the IETF's stance on patents is due to the fact that it has to standardize what are often de-facto standards, picked by market effects to be the best technology. Now Microsoft is abusing the process, in order to use the IETF as a marketing weapon against its competitors.
Now my opinion is that patents and standards are exact opposites, and if you want a patent, you should just stay away from standard bodies until your patent runs out, and they should stay away from you. The patent owner and the standards body just have opposite goals:
The standards body wants to reduce the work and costs involved in increasing the number and likely hood of people using best practices and technologies, by agreeing on them and publicising them. In the knowledge fields, a standard has the force of law, simply because knowledge of a best practice being a best practice, means any other way of doing things has to be justified. The best practice is simply, better. The patent owner wants to make a maximal profit out of whatever use of his technology. That means those who compete with the patent owner cannot use the technology without the patent owner not having what he wants. The difference is fundamental, and a conciliatory position by Microsoft, as generous as it may be, is suspicious, simply because it's against their own interest
Well with the possible exception of removing "random" spam would allow them to become the only source of email advertising for their hotmail users, but in this case, their interest it would be magnified if they can deny it to _someone_, say aol, who would be denied from licensing the patent without some counterpart being presented to Microsoft. Can they exclude AOL reasonably without being discriminatory, I wonder, since IANAL, but I can certainly see their advantage in doing so.
Parent
Signed agreement (Score:4, Funny)
Three drops of blood
Other fluids (defined in separate document)
Provide access for nanoprobes (Resistance is futile, after all.)
I'm in!
Yeah, funny and all (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Yeah, funny and all (Score:4, Insightful)
Prior art may exist (I know absolutely nothing of that), but who wants to go to court with Microsoft?! Especially when they have admitted (q.v. Halloween memos) that patents are potentially useful to combat open source software.
Parent
Why not create another solution? (Score:5, Interesting)
OpenBSD did it when they made CARP. Cisco wouldn't play so not only did the OBSD team create a new solution but they created a superior solution. Is there any reason why the FOSS community could not come up with an alternative and try submitting it to the IETF? (I do know that the OBSD developers got stuffed when they tried this but maybe it might work here.)
Re:Why not create another solution? (Score:4, Interesting)
The Open Source community can, and has, come up with competing standards, but bringing enough pressure down on Microsoft to force them to comply is a whole lot harder, since they hold all the cards.
The only hope, then, for an open source competing standard to succeed, is to make the open source solution so obviously superior that even Microsoft users can see its superiority, and bring pressure to bear themselves to force Microsoft to support that standard.
Parent
Re:Why not create another solution? (Score:5, Funny)
Where do I sign?
Parent
Re:Why not create another solution? (Score:4, Insightful)
No they don't, not in this case. If Sender-ID client code is only deployed among Microsoft products, then communicating with Microsoft products may require an administrator to put some records in their domain zone file. Microsoft cannot yet prevent me from putting the DNS records in my zone that their software is looking for. I wouldn't put it past them to try, but it doesn't seem like they can have any IP claim over a string in a TXT record.
But I don't have to use or deploy any software that uses any Sender-ID patented algorithms. Email for my users will still be delivered as usual, whether my MTA checks Sender-ID records or not.
The worst that can happen is that people will face a choice of whether or not to put Sender-ID records in their DNS, if they wish to communicate with Microsoft products that enforce Sender-ID protocol.
Parent
Microsoft would lose that gamble (Score:4, Insightful)
SPF is not necessary for exchanging electronic mail. If Microsoft servers fail to exchange mail with any significant number of OSS mail servers, the result won't be that OSS gives up and everybody signs patent license agreements with Microsoft, but rather that SPF won't get used. The long term fall-out would be that people would take Microsoft even less seriously when they come to standards bodies, and to hurt IETF credibility even further (IETF is already largely irrelevant).
Parent
MS Hypocrisy (Score:3, Interesting)
The First Shot in the Standards Wars (Score:5, Interesting)
IETF Global Perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
This could be a good test case. MS may continue to pursue its IP Holy Grail business model, but if the IETF can stand firm and refuse restrictive licensing, they will not be able to force it down the world's throat. On the other hand, if the IETF does accept these kinds of IP restrictions, MS may have a path forward in pursuing its new business model of patents and copyrights for obvious and trivial ideas.
Senmail's Position (Score:5, Interesting)
On the open source side, the sendmail MTA is routinely bundled into other larger systems, notably open source operating system releases such as Linux and BSD distributions as well as commercial closed-source systems such as Solaris and AIX. Bundlers would need to execute their own copy of the RFSIPL. Those systems are in turn sometimes incorporated into other products, which would seemingly require another layer of patent licenses, and so on down the tree. As a practical matter, this makes the decision to include sendmail with Sender ID into their release more problematic. This is obviously not desirable from our point of view.
And...
While these are pragmatic rather than legal reasons, our likely decision at Sendmail will be to distribute our Sender ID implementation as a separate package that is not required to run the sendmail MTA under a distinct (possibly modified) Sendmail Open Source license. Open source users will have the option of downloading and installing the Sender ID package should they want the additional functionality. Bundlers will be able to choose whether they want to include the Sender ID technology or not, but will still be able to use the base sendmail MTA without additional IPR issues.
I'll be really interested to find out what the take of some Linux Distros will be on this.Re:Senmail's Position (Score:4, Informative)
I'll be really interested to find out what the take of some Linux Distros will be on this.
Debian at least will never include anything that requires them to sign a patent license.
Parent
Stalemate (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just the latest chapter in IP stupidity.
This stuff has been discussed for years, if this had been treated like most other W3C standards we'd be in the clear by now waiting for implementations, instead everyone's scared. Does anyone realistically think that there aren't patents that W3C standards already infringe? Finally we actually get rights to something and we're inspecting the teeth, simply because the subject has been raised.
The crazy part of this whole deal is that most software is riddled with potential patent violations, including Microsoft's and including projects like Mozilla, Gimp and Open Office. That's why MS are trying to retain *defensive* rights, because they know it would be dangerous to give this IP away, anyone could stand on their shoulders, and a widget and then sue them (and that has happened already) and Microsoft would have no way of countering. If they adopted a more GPL oriented license with the rights being rescinded in the event of any patent suit against M$ it would be golden. They could just do to the protagonists what IBM has just done to SCO, infact that wording is almost already in the GPL.
I think this situation can be salvaged with another revision of the license. We should not give up on this or go for the second best option on such an improtant proposal.
We're getting to witness what the beginning of the web would have been like had Tim Bernards Lee patented some of his ideas. It ain't going to be pretty.
michael screwed up the story... (Score:3, Interesting)
Leave it to Michael to post some flame in an instance where Eric Allman argues that Microsoft has made signficant changes in the license in an effort to work closely with open-source vendors.
Sender-ID adds very little if anything (Score:4, Interesting)
SPF works today with existing software - I'm at a loss to why anyone would want Sender-ID apart from Microsoft.
I'm sure Microsoft people will install it all blindly (no change there) but if a significant number of mail servers don't implement and or deploy it then it has failed anyway.
Microsoft doesn't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Furthermore, going to IETF with such standards proposals is pointless: the only producers of software that count in this space are Microsoft and OSS. If IETF starts producing standards under terms that are not acceptable to OSS developers, then that just makes the IETF irrelevant but it won't help with adoption of a solution.
In this case, if IETF's SPF standard isn't 100% compatible with OSS licenses, OSS software will not incorporate it and Microsoft Exchange installations will be unable to use IETF SPF with a significant fraction of Internet hosts. If Microsoft were competing with a commercial vendor of mail server software, that vendor would be in deep trouble and it might induce that vendor to come crawling to Microsoft begging for a license. But OSS developers won't do that: OSS projects don't have the same kinds of short-term pressures on them as commercial software vendors, and even if they wanted to give in, OSS licenses make it impossible.
Microsoft's management just doesn't seem to understand that they are not dealing with another business anymore: the strategies that they have used against commercial competitors just don't work against OSS. All they are accomplishing with this sort of behavior is to taint their own credibility and the credibility of the standards bodies they get involved.
Where Sender ID fits into the picture (Score:5, Insightful)
- SPF (http://spf.pobox.com) is the current email authentication protocol that is dominating the world.
- Microsoft proposed Caller ID which was never accepted by the community.
- Microsoft and SPF advocate Meng Weng Wong brokered a deal and formed Sender ID. Basically, SPF is intact, but some features of Caller ID are preserved as an optional extension.
The part of Caller ID that remains is the PRA or "Purported Responsible Authority". The PRA is deteremined by a complicated algorithm that I personally don't believe would work. The algorithm is intentionally vague in some areas, and the results are ultimately subjective. The intention of the PRA algorithm is to determine who wrote the email based on the email headers. As everyone knows, the email headers are spoofable. But the idea goes, if you can track down the PRA, then you can authenticate this email based on that, rather than just the last hop like SPF does.
The problem from day one has been the patent issue. Microsoft is in the process of patenting the PRA algorithm. This isn't a problem. The problem is that Microsoft refuses to put the patent in the public domain or license the patent such that anyone can use it except those who use patents against Microsoft. Both of those strategies are perfectly reasonable, and are pretty much what IBM does for most of its patents.
Microsoft originally wanted to get a copy of the software and a signature before they would grant a license. Well, that doesn't work for F/OSS. The MARID working group who is investigating various solutions to the email authentication protocol for the IETF has been petitioning Microsoft to revise or clarify their licensing procedure. Well, they finally have, and in so doing they have not made it F/OSS compatible.
Microsoft thinks they can bully us around, but they don't realize they are the small kid on the email block. Their Caller ID failed. Now Sender ID is going to fail because Microsoft refuses to participate.
But that's okay. The PRA algorithm isn't anything we'll need to solve the email authentication problem.
Parent
Revert back to SPF only? (Score:3, Insightful)
Can anyone tell us what is stopping the Free world from simply reverting back to plain old SPF and ignoring Microsoft's extensions?
Re:OpenPGP Anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
Because that requires changes to end-user behaviour.
In any case, a signature doesn't prove identity unless you or somebody in your web of trust has checked the fingerprint. This means that it's only a little more useful than a manual whitelist when it comes to avoiding spam.
Re:prefer DomainKeys (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:prefer DomainKeys (Score:4, Informative)
Even better, SPF doesn't necessarily compete with DomainKeys.
SPF enumerates which servers are allowed to send email for a certain domain.
DomainKeys authenticates individual email messages as having come from a certain domain.
Together they could be quite effective against spam. In particular, Yahoo also talks about building a reputation system on top of DomainKeys. The idea is that a spammer would quickly find the 'reputation' of their domain going down and soon no email server would accept their email.
Parent
Re:Jeez (Score:3, Insightful)
It's considered good when anyone can play the game under the exact same rules, regardless of how much money, prestige and lawyers they have. That's what an "Open Standard" is defined as - an agreement on a set of rules that is there for all to see and use. Microsoft still doesn't get the "O
Re:Jeez (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you unable to see what's bad about that - cutting all open source out of the use of e-mail - so that this once open standard gets nicely hijacked and "owned" by MS?
Re:Jeez (Score:3, Insightful)
From what I've seen looking at the major FOSS development communities you listed they code and just keep moving on. Nobody is really wasting tons of time going on COLA and spending hours debating whether it should be GNU/Linux or just Linux.
Now the people that are debating this in the IETF? Well that's their job. This stuff needs to get sorted out so the proposed stan
Re:Non-open Source license (Score:4, Insightful)
You obviously didn't read the thread. Microsoft's patent license is explicitly non-sublicenseable, which means that you may not redistribute to anybody who has not already accepted Microsoft's license (and by accept, I mean, printed it out, signed it, and faxed it back to Microsoft).
While that may not seem like a big deal to you, keep in mind that that's an incredible burden to place on freely distributed software, which would otherwise circulate quickly and freely.
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