Subject: RE: More on Exim, GPL and the IPR license

From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2004 09:02:34 -0700

T here is a rule in the House of Commons that whenever a document is
referred to the entirety of the document must be lodged in the house
library, rather than just the portions that are quoted.
 
What was the letter sent to Dr Hazel? What are the grounds on which his
statement is based? What is the context of the excerpt?
 
It seems somewhat strange that Dr Hazel would take this position when he has
in the past taken a much more open approach to licensing:

Written by: Philip Hazel <  <http://lists.gnu.org/spam.html>
[email-masked]>

University of Cambridge Computing Service,
Cambridge, England. Phone:  <redacted> 

Copyright (c) 1997-2000 University of Cambridge

Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any purpose on any
computer system, and to redistribute it freely, subject to the following
restrictions:

1. This software is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
   but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
   MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

2. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented, either by
   explicit claim or by omission. In practice, this means that if you use
   PCRE in software which you distribute to others, commercially or
   otherwise, you must put a sentence like this

     Regular expression support is provided by the PCRE library package,
     which is open source software, written by Philip Hazel, and copyright
     by the University of Cambridge, England.

   somewhere reasonably visible in your documentation and in any relevant
   files or online help data or similar. A reference to the ftp site for
   the source, that is, to

      <ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/programming/pcre/>
ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/programming/pcre/

   should also be given in the documentation.

3. Altered versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be
   misrepresented as being the original software.

4. If PCRE is embedded in any software that is released under the GNU
   General Purpose Licence (GPL), then the terms of that licence shall
   supersede any condition above with which it is incompatible.

I hate to keep harping on this, but I really do believe that it is
important.   I solicited the opinion of Dr. Philip Hazel of Cambridge
University who as you probably know is the principal author of Exim.   I
asked him if he would consider releasing Exim under a difference license
other than the GPL if doing so would allow Sender-ID code to be included in
it.   His response was:

"The short answer is "No". 

I have no desire to change Exim's licence, and certainly not as a result 
from pressure of Microsoft's lawyers. Furthermore, some of the other 
postings I've seen have said that developers using this "free" licence 
must register with Microsoft. That is completely unacceptable." 

I believe that Dr. Hazel's response demonstrates two things.   The first is
that one of the most popular MTAs in use will not be able to include
Sender-ID code.   The second is that a very well respected open source
developer sees the IPR license terms as "completely unacceptable".

Kevin

---

From: Kevin Peuhkurinen <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2004 12:31:53 -0400

Before I get to the quoting, I'd like to point out that I don't see the 
PCRE license as being a "more open approach" except in that he allows 
the GPL to supersede his own license.

Now, notwithstanding that this is not the House of Commons, here is my 
email to Dr. Hazel:

/--------------------
Hello Philip.   I am writing you this email because at this moment the 
IETF is debating whether or not to accept Sender-ID as an Internet 
standard.   Unfortunately, Sender-ID is encumbered by a "Royalty Free 
Patent License" from Microsoft which Eben Moglen of the FSF has declared 
incompatible with the GPL.   It therefore appears that Sender-ID code 
could not be included in GPL'ed software such as Exim.   Since Exim has 
a significant MTA market share, I think it is important that we consider 
this issue.

I would therefore like to ask you one question:  if the IETF accepts 
Sender-ID as is, would you -- and indeed could you -- release Exim under 
a different license other than the GPL which may be more compatible with 
Microsoft's patent license in order to allow Sender-ID to be built into 
Exim?    Please note that any answer you give me will be passed on to 
the public IETF forum.

Thanks very much for your time.    I appreciate it.
/ ------------------------

Here is his reply, which quotes my email:

-------------------------

/On Fri, 27 Aug 2004, Kevin Peuhkurinen wrote:

/

>/> Hello Philip.   I am writing you this email because at this moment the IETF is
>> debating whether or not to accept Sender-ID as an Internet standard.
>> Unfortunately, Sender-ID is encumbered by a "Royalty Free Patent License" from
>> Microsoft which Eben Moglen of the FSF has declared incompatible with the GPL.
>> It therefore appears that Sender-ID code could not be included in GPL'ed
>> software such as Exim.   Since Exim has a significant MTA market share, I
>> think it is important that we consider this issue.
>/
>
/
Indeed. I have received several emails on this topic, and there are also 
some on the exim-users mailing list.

/

>/> I would therefore like to ask you one question:  if the IETF accepts Sender-ID
>> as is, would you -- and indeed could you -- release Exim under a different
>> license other than the GPL which may be more compatible with Microsoft's
>> patent license in order to allow Sender-ID to be built into Exim? 
>/
>
/
The short answer is "No". 

I have no desire to change Exim's licence, and certainly not as a result 
from pressure of Microsoft's lawyers. Furthermore, some of the other
postings I've seen have said that developers using this "free" licence
must register with Microsoft. That is completely unacceptable.

Personally, I don't like the SPF/Sender_ID idea because it breaks 
automatic email redirection. However, people have already configured 
Exim to support SPF, without any code changes, though I do not know the 
details (or how SPF differs from Sender-ID).

/

>/> Please note that any answer you give me will be passed on to the
>> public IETF forum.
>/
>
/
I have no problem with that.

Regards,
Philip/

-------------------------

Hallam-Baker, Phillip wrote:

> What was the letter sent to Dr Hazel? What are the grounds on 
> which his statement is based? What is the context of the excerpt?
>  
> It seems somewhat strange that Dr Hazel would take this position when 
> he has in the past taken a much more open approach to licensing:
>  
>  
> Written by: Philip Hazel <[email-masked] 
> <http://lists.gnu.org/spam.html>>
>
>     important.   I solicited the opinion of Dr. Philip Hazel of
>     Cambridge University who as you probably know is the principal
>     author of Exim.   I asked him if he would consider releasing Exim
>     under a difference license other than the GPL if doing so would
>     allow Sender-ID code to be included in it.   His response was:
>
>     /"The short answer is "No". /
>
>     /I have no desire to change Exim's licence, and certainly not as a
>     result /
>     /from pressure of Microsoft's lawyers. Furthermore, some of the
>     other/
>     /postings I've seen have said that developers using this "free"
>     licence/
>     /must register with Microsoft. That is completely unacceptable."/
>
>     I believe that Dr. Hazel's response demonstrates two things.   The
>     first is that one of the most popular MTAs in use will not be able
>     to include Sender-ID code.   The second is that a very well
>     respected open source developer sees the IPR license terms as
>     "completely unacceptable".
>
>     Kevin
>