Subject: RE: DEPLOY: Microsoft Royalty Free Sender ID Patent License FAQ

From: "Harry Katz" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 11:34:48 -0700

Mark, if there's a specific part of the license you'd like clarified,
I'd encourage you to send mail to [email-masked].  Someone from
our legal department will answer your question.  

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] 
> [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Mark C. Langston
> Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 2004 10:26 AM
> To: 'IETF MARID List'
> Subject: Re: DEPLOY: Microsoft Royalty Free Sender ID Patent 
> License FAQ
> 
> 
> 
> I'd have to agree with Koen.  I'm adding SPFv1 checks to 
> GOSSiP.  I'd like to support the eventual product of MARID, 
> but given the current license confusion, I can't, nor am I 
> inclined to.  This isn't a "I won't support anything from 
> Microsoft" position; this is a "It's not entirely clear to me 
> what rights I retain and which I surrender by including a 
> Sender-ID implementation in my code." position.
> 
> -- 
> Mark C. Langston            GOSSiP Project          Sr. Unix SysAdmin
> [email-masked]   http://sufficiently-advanced.net    [email-masked]
> Systems & Network Admin      Distributed               SETI Institute
> http://bitshift.org       E-mail Reputation       http://www.seti.org
> 
>

---

From: "Mark C. Langston" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 12:21:15 -0700

> our legal department will answer your question.  

I appreciate the offer of assistance Harry, and probably will take
advantage of it.  However, I can't in good conscience base my decisions
on the advice of your legal team, as it isn't a disinterested party.

Since I can't afford to pay a lawyer to consult with me on the matter, I
think the best approach will be to sit back and watch to see how things
play out once others have deployed open-source projects supporting
Sender-ID, and once the patent filings have become public knowledge.  In
particular, I'm concerned about the potential leverage agreeing to the
license terms gives the IP holders against those who implement both
Sender-ID and SPF simultaneously.  It's not clear to me whether the IP
holder would pursue as infringing those who implement SPF.

I also concur with another poster's statement:  having to submit a
paper agreement to the IP holder is, in my opinion, burdensome.

The very short version of all this is:  if I feel I need to consult a
lawyer before integrating this into my software, I'm just not going to
implement it.

---

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 16:20:58 -0400

Right, and then get the clarification put into the license itself so it does not need the
clarification.  Or will that take several weeks to do also?

Terry Fielder
Manager Software Development and Deployment
Great Gulf Homes / Ashton Woods Homes
[email-masked]
Fax: (416) 441-9085

> [mailto:[email-masked]]On Behalf Of Harry Katz
> Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 2004 2:35 PM
> To: Mark C. Langston; IETF MARID List
> Subject: RE: DEPLOY: Microsoft Royalty Free Sender ID Patent
> License FAQ
>
>
>

---

From: Arnt Gulbrandsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2004 00:06:59 +0200

[email-masked] writes:
> Right, and then get the clarification put into the license itself so 
> it does not need the clarification. Or will that take several weeks 
> to do also?

Relax. Microsoft, apart from being Microsoft, is also a big company. 
Things take a long time at big companies.

Arnt

---

From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2004 12:09:52 +0200

On Tue, Aug 24, 2004 at 11:34:48AM -0700,
 Harry Katz <[email-masked]> wrote 
 a message of 30 lines which said:

> Mark, if there's a specific part of the license you'd like
> clarified, I'd encourage you to send mail to [email-masked].
> Someone from our legal department will answer your question.

This is not what I see. I have sent several questions to
[email-masked]. I believe they were polite (anyone in MARID can
check, I copied the mailing list) and that the english was not too
catastrophic.

I did not get a reply, neither did MARID.

Now, in most cases, no reply after 24 h is not a problem. People have
more important things to do than to reply to my mail. But, here, we
have a decision to make in the next ten days.

So, what is the reason:

1) Lack of understanding that there is a relative emergency?

2) [Suggested by Arnt Gulbrandsen] Things take a long time at big
companies. But isn't Microsoft advertise itself as an "agile company"?

3) Deliberate despise?

4) The reponse will come, just wait a few more days.