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FSF & OSI Speak out Against Sender-ID License
NW writes "As a followup to yesterday story, Eben Moglen of FSF and Larry Rosen of OSI have publically spoken out against Microsoft's Sender-ID license calling it incompatible with the GPL and Open Source. A related eWeek story also covers this and includes the following quote from Eric Allman, the author of Sendmail: "It's pretty clear that it's going to take an act of whatever deity Microsoft worships in order to get them to back down on the sublicensing issue. They made it absolutely clear to us that they were not even going to consider changing this, and the legal folks made it further clear that they would rather see Sender ID die than back down.""
So be it.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Eben-Wan Kenobi: "I don't think so."
OK, so the "back down" is directed the other direction, but it sounds so right, doesn't it?
We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds
Dear Bill,
Regarding mandatory Sender-ID licensing.
Get bent!!!
Yours Sincerly,
jo42 (on behalf of the rest of the world)
That would be an act of Dollar, the almighty god of commerce. Worshiped by by corporations and monopolists around the world.
It's quite clear that this is the best strategy that Microsoft has against Free Software. MS _may_ not get to point where they directly sue over patents and copyrights but be assured that they will work very hard to create useful and popular things that are legally incompatible with Free Software.
I wonder how feasible it would be for Free Software to fight back by embrace and extending some ubiquitious and vital technology the way Microsoft hs tried with e-mail and the Web, getting a patent on it, and then licensing it under some GPL-like license?
Sadly (for some, at least), this would be a strike at business in general, and I'm not sure everyone would want to attack an entire industry based on the actions of a few unruly members, and open source probably isn't big enough to do it to the entire industry. Personally, I'd just make a commercial licensing option that is more BSD-like for some vendors with a specific "No Microsoft" clause.
It'd be fun to see what happens to Microsoft if we could effectively make it impossible to provide some service from Windows servers. Maybe actually bring competition back to the market.
</knee-jerk>
Yes, the statements can be found here.
"Madness is something rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, peoples, ages it is the rule." -- Nietzsche
"No Microsoft" is still "Not Free".
:)
This is one of those moments where you have to reflect on what TRULY free TRULY means.
For example, Free Speech means you can say something that I absolutely, 100% disagree with, or even despise you as a person for, yet you are acting within the law (whether I is joe citizen or the US government).
Or, as has been mis-attributed to Voltaire a few times, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
If you truly believe your software, or ALL software should be free, that means ANYONE, including Microsoft, MUST be allowed to use it (within the terms of the particular "Free-compatible" license, of course).
I wouldn't expect to see MS modifying and sharing any GPL code anytime soon, but they have used BSD code in the past, and I have no doubt they do use binaries of GPL'd projects (but would naturally avoid tainting themselves by looking, let along modifying, sources).
You can't pick and choose and still call it 'Free'.
I recognize your knee-jerk tag - so just consider this the second part of a knee-jerk chain reaction
Xentax
You shouldn't verb words.
I wouldn't expect to see MS modifying and sharing any GPL code anytime soon, but they have used BSD code in the past, and I have no doubt they do use binaries of GPL'd projects (but would naturally avoid tainting themselves by looking, let along modifying, sources).
They already distribute GPL licensed code. See Windows Services for UNIX 3.5. It includes gcc, g++, make, rcs, awk, grep, sed, tar, cpio, etc.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
As long as Microsoft is incorporating SPF into their solution, then it doesn't really matter if few providers use SenderID (as long SPF is widely adopted).
SPF provides the means to eliminate the most egregious spammers by eliminating all emails with forged headers and providing a means to ensure that the sender is complying with the rules set by their ISP. It is simple to implement because it uses already existing features of SMTP and DNS to operate, and it does not need to be adopted "all at once" by every ISP, as it does not interupt mail being sent to/from non-participating ISPs until the provider using it makes that decision themselves. It is also possible for a user (of a participating ISP) to incorporate SPF response into their filters in such a way that it would not eliminate any legitimate mails, and it would still be effective at helping the user to identify spam.
It will help ISPs verify that their users are violating policy by sending spam. It will help make blacklists more accurate by identifying ISPs that permit or encourage spammers to use their services.
Read the FAQ.
As long there is progress toward wide adoption of SPF, there is little reason to argue over Microsoft's SenderID licensing scheme. If their protocol cannot be used with qmail, sendmail, and other high reliability/security servers, it will not be adopted. As long as Microsoft has followed its stated intention to adopt SPF as part of SenderID, then SPF will work for everyone, including those using SenderID.
Read, L
Practically speaking, what does this mean? That we won't be able to send emails to hotmail.com, msn.com and microsoft.com unless we use Sender ID enabled mail servers? What exactly does Sender ID do that will cause a problem of incompatibility for the open source community? I understand that Sendmail and others won't be able to implement it as is, but what does not being able to implement it mean?