Subject: AOL's stance on SenderID and IPR issues

From: Carl Hutzler <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 10:46:08 -0400

Someone on the list asked me to post AOL's thoughts on the IPR/SenderID
thread...

Our internal patent lawyer has reviewed the license agreement and said that
he found no IP issues and we are free to pursue a license to use it in our
infrastructure.

The only issues I have seen on the lists likely do not apply to AOL:

A) Sendmail redistrubutes/sells software - AOL does not sell MTAs other than
perhaps netscape iplanet. But I am not closely related to that team.

B) Some have complained about the nuisance of applying for a license for
every "small organization" and potential costs of that. Folks really want a
GPL. While I understand this, AOL is not in this category and likely would
not see licensing this technology as an undue burden.

That's the scoop from AOL land :-)

-Carl

-- 
Carl Hutzler
Director, AntiSpam Operations
America Online Mail Operations
[email-masked]
703.265.5521 work
703.915.6862 cell

---

From: Rand Wacker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 08:34:44 -0700 (PDT)

> he found no IP issues and we are free to pursue a license to use it in our

Eric Allman's analysis states: "... the RFSIPL permits [end-user
customers] to use Sender Id without executing a license."

It would probably be good to clear up (as there has been some confusion on
the list) that sites which are just publishing Sender ID records or
installing commercial or open source Sender ID software *would not* need
to get a patent license for the IPR (they would of course need to get a
license for the copyrighted code they are installing)

Your comment implies that AOL might need to execute a license in order to
implement (ie, write) Sender ID code for your infrastructure.  The
question of if "in-house" development needs a license is an interesting
one, but I wanted to make sure that this is in truth different from sites
"implementing" *other people's software* in their environment.

-Rand

---

From: "william(at)elan.net" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 18:14:03 -0700 (PDT)

I'd like to also hear how this license would impact Yahoo.

It is my understanding that Yahoo is one of the largest (if not the largest)
companies using Qmail and there have been substantial discussions on this 
list in the last day that license terms may not compatible with that at all.

I don't know if there is anybody on this list who works for yahoo, but I 
know there is at least one person here who worked for it not long ago
(for company recently aquired by it), possibly he knows right person at 
yahoo to ask or maybe somebody else does.

---

From: Matt Sergeant <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 10:24:15 +0100

> list in the last day that license terms may not compatible with that 

I don't think Yahoo uses qmail any more - they use a custom MTA that 
they wrote in-house.

However we do, and are one of the larger installations of qmail (2500 
servers). However as a commercial company, like AOL, we don't have a 
problem with the license. We can develop our own implementation and 
request a license from Microsoft to do so. The qmail license would only 
affect us if we wanted to distribute that code to others.

However that doesn't imply we're entirely happy with the sender-id 
license. If the licensing block adoption then it is an issue, 
regardless of the legal status.

______________________________________________________________________
This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System.
For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email 
______________________________________________________________________

---

From: Rand Wacker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 12:05:54 -0700 (PDT)

> I'd like to also hear how this license would impact Yahoo.

As Matt and others point out, this is irrelevant, as the license does not
impact end-users of the code, only people who will redistribute it (which
qmail doesn't allow anyways ;)

-Rand