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FSF & OSI Speak out Against Sender-ID License

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the well-there's-no-surprise-here dept.

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.""

6 of 51 comments (clear)

  1. Fine by me. by LordNimon · · Score: 5, Funny
    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
    1. Re:Fine by me. by Phillup · · Score: 4, Funny

      There should be a "No, Seriously" mod to counteract "Funny".

      It isn't a joke.

      Die.

      --

      --Phillip

      Can you say BIRTH TAX
    2. Re:Fine by me. by LordNimon · · Score: 5, Informative

      That's what I was thinking. I wasn't intending to be funny. I was very serious. Oh well.

      --
      And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
      To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
    3. Re:Fine by me. by walt-sjc · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sender-ID can incorporate SPF. It isn't a one or the other battle.

      I've read through the ietf archives, and the big issues are that the license seems OK on the surface, but the details of exactly what is patented is very unclear AND The requirement that implementors and distributers get a license, even if it's free, is a huge burden. Imagine if this kind of thing happened with all the standards? A company like redhat would need to get thousands of licenses from thousands of companies. Debian would be impossible. Open source would die.

      The end result is that SenderID will be mostly useless because it will not get critical mass adoption. ISP's rely heavily on opensource software. If opensource mail software does not support SenderID, only a small fraction of the world will adopt it.

  2. Act of... by warrendodge · · Score: 5, Interesting
    "going to take an act of whatever deity Microsoft worships in order to get them to back down"

    That would be an act of Dollar, the almighty god of commerce. Worshiped by by corporations and monopolists around the world.

  3. Re:Fight back by Xentax · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "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.