MS Releases License For Sender-ID 242
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."
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: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.
Yeah, funny and all (Score:3, Informative)
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:Stalemate (Score:1, Informative)
sendmail is.
How does this incorrect tripe get modded up?
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.
Re:IETF Global Perspective/IPR declarations page (Score:2, Informative)
fairly similar "don't sue me and you can use it" terms. The IPR
terms being offered here almost look like a cut and paste job, to
be honest, and that may not be a bad thing. There actually
can be advantages to someone holding a defensive patent:
It means someone who wants to use a submarine patent to
control this technology has to fight Microsoft's lawyers.
Microsoft's grant is: 1) subject to any denial of claims by
the USPTO, 2) Royalty-free (as in beer), 3) Non-discriminatory
(anyone, anywhere, any time). Other submarine patents might
not be nearly so nice, and I'd rather have the next guy along
sue Microsoft than me.
There are some pain in the rump aspects; it is not:
sublicensable (everyone has to get their own free thing).
It does require you license back whatever you have claims on
that is needed for Sender-ID to get their thing needed
for Sender-ID (this is common in the IPR declarations given
to the IETF). That, in my humble not-a-lawyer opinion is
why you have to let them know your use is under the free,
global, yadda-yadda license rather than being an
infringement of the patent.
The good news: this does not require those deploying
Sender-ID records to do anything. It does not
require anyone using packaged binary software to do
anything. It does not require anyone distributing
packaged binary software to do anything.
It's a minor pain for implementors and a hassle for distributors
(who may, like Sendmail, have to put the Sender-ID code in a
different distribution). Not ideal, but not enough of a pita,
in my opinion, to go without the technology. Especially if
their claims cover things like "storing MTA authorization records
in the DNS" (and they could), rejecting this could mean rejecting
the whole ball of wax as an anti-forgery tool.
Who wins then?
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.
Re:GPL problem. (Score:3, Informative)
Seriously, what's the problem?
Re:Where Sender ID fits into the picture (Score:3, Informative)
Just because I intensely dislike Microsoft's system does not mean that SPF should instead be deployed.
I'd like to see a very specific example of a problem to end users that SPF is intended to solve, that all the deployment issues involved will be paid for with. It is not, as I've pointed out, capable of stopping spam, nor is it capable of avoiding Joe jobs. It is a very weak (and known breakable in a number of ways) authentication system that is heavily tied to the existing mail transport system and does not appear to be easily extensible. There are better existing systems.
here is why GPL is a problem (Score:2, Informative)
You can't bundle GPL with your source and distribute it, unless you are distributing under the terms of the GPL and no other restrictions are imposed.
In order to derive software from Microsoft patent, Microsfot requires you to give them reciprocal rights on certain of your patents. You can not impose such a requirement on software if you are deriving it from other copyrighted material you are using under the GPL license.
The copyright holder expressly forbids it.
The GPL says:
You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.
The microsoft software is not transferable to all third parties with no charge under the terms of the GPL. Only to a subset of third parties, namely people who agree to abide by specific additional stipulations of the microsoft license. Consequently the GPL would would not enable them to use the software unless they agreed to the additional microsoft terms. The GPL specifically does not allow you to add additional restrictions to the use of the software. The fact that those restrictions are from microsoft is not at all relevant.
If you want to add additional restrictions you have exceeded the license granted to you by the GPL, and you must obtain permission to derive from the authors, just like you would need to obtain permission in the case of any copyrighted work.
You may not revoke from the recipients of your GPL derived work, any rights the GPL granted to you, because the GPL only gave you license to distribute if you license as a whole the entire work under the GPL. The requirements of Microsofts license do not give all the same rights as those of the GPL and thus you can't impose microsofts license onto GPL work, and then use a GPL license to justify, what would be, copyright infringment against the copyright holders of the GPL software you are deriving from.