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OSI And Microsoft Negotiating Over Sender ID
ValourX writes "Microsoft's Sender ID has already been rejected by both the Debian Project and the Apache Software Foundation, but Joe Barr of NewsForge today interviewed Larry Rosen of the Open Source Initiative and discovered that there are negotiations between the two entities with regard to Sender ID's licensing. Could Microsoft be considering an Open Source license for Sender ID? Slashdot has covered other aspects of this story in the past. NewsForge is part of OSTG, like Slashdot."
sender ID still sounds a lot like PGP to me. why not just use that?
Amen.
Microsoft might as well let SenderID go open source. It would make their jobs easier. Less spam = less viruses = less need for frequent updates and less load on Hotmail servers. Am I wrong?
This could just be a tactic by Microsoft to push their software. Think about it, a somber looking Balmer (if that's even possible) saying "We tried to negotiate with the OSS community, but because of their ignorance we wern't able to come to an agreement"
Of course, at the same time they will start more FUD sites touting the benifits of Sender ID and why it will ONLY run on their software.
John 3:16 - The easiest way to a BETTER YOU.
It's basically like this:
Alot of MS mail environments don't send mail like SPF envisions. Sender-ID basically makes life easier for MS customers. MS is coming to SPF people, saying, heh, can you modify your protocol to be a bit more friendly to our implementations?
And, since there are actually users behind those mail servers, SPF folks say, sure. Lets talk. Lets see how we can better adapt to your architecture.
Then MS turns around and says, oh, you want to adapt to us? You'll have to sign these forms.
At which point, SPF people walk away. They've already got a great way to tell eachother what they need to say, and while they're willing to work with MS, really, Sender-ID really helps MS more than it helps anyone else. A fate where exchange deployments need to either alter their topology or risk getting their mail dropped isn't one that's beneficial to the company.
Indeed, there are these people called customers that'll handle any intransigence on the part of their vendor. Which, uh, is about what's happening right now.
I'm not saying this is exactly what's going on. Neither side is monolithic. But this is, at least from the outside, what appears to be happening. Someone on the inside should feel free to correct me.
--Dan
With millions of dollars in bandwidth costs on the line, and potentially billions of dollars in customer satisfaction, Microsoft may very well want to play nice on this issue. SPAM is a serious problem, and bickering and fighting isn't going to make it go away. Cooperation and hard work will.
Bryan
They aren't just "a business" they are the utterly dominant presence in all-things-computers. They should act responsiby with that power; instead they use each and every little god-damned thing they can think of to put their own proprietary stuff out there with hooks that give MS complete control.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
I'm just curious as to what is there to negotiate? Either they license it royalty-free for all fields of use, or it does not belong in an officially-recognised IETF standard. There is no "middle ground" license that will satisfy the community. Patents are, by definition, incompatible with open standards.
I wonder if SenderID might require some old Exchange installs to be upgraded. When I tried searching Microsoft's web site for "SenderID Exchange 5.5", I got one link. Items I should consider when building "Commerce Solutions with Technology". So I am taking that as a yes. Cha-ching, Microsoft...Commerce Solutions with Technology at work!
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
The essence of SenderID was obvious to a lot of people long before Microsoft decided to patent it. SPF, on which it's based, came from Meng Wong. There were the earlier RMX proposals from Hadmut Danisch, as well as another from Feyck, and another from Green. Paul Vixie had proposed a similar mechanism as early as the mid 90's. A lot of other people (myself included) independently hit upon roughly the same idea.
Basically, the problem is MS went ahead and patented something which had been proposed, in writing, by a lot of people (and perhaps simultaneously by Microsoft people), and now they're trying to restrict its use. We're not asking for generosity here. Whatever the USPTO says, MS didn't really invent this stuff, so they have no moral right (even if they now have a legal right) to dictate terms. Not asking for handouts, just fair play.
Yeah, everyone will be crying in their beer when Yahoo's (lesser of several evils) DomainKeys starts being used to control access to Yahoo's large spookable herd of eyeballs.
I have said this before - anyone (Yahoo, HotMail, gmail, MS*) who has large numbers of mail boxes that people want to reach can be billed. How? By Signing outgoing mail you are certifying that _you_ have sent that mail - all yahoo has to do is count the number of mails signed by domain example.com and then autoforward a weekly/monthly bill to the email address in the whois system for domain example.com
You say, never gonna happen, people won't pay, they won't get the billing email - it won't matter to Yahoo - they send bills, if they don't get paid they just blacklist that cert/domain.
The big email box herders would have no reason to do this if Yahoo!DomainKey (tm) is widely deployed. If you disargee please explain why they wouldn't do it.