Microsoft refuses copyright on Sender ID
Sender ID (RFC 4406) is a technology for identifying email messages at the DNS level, created two years ago to combat spam and fraud on the Internet. The other day, Microsoft announced that it is distributing the Open Specification Promise program (“promise of open specifications”) to Sender ID, that is, it undertakes not to sue anyone who will use this technology.
The procedure for adopting Sender ID as a single standard by the IETF organization began more than a year ago, but heated debate immediately erupted around Sender ID. The fact is that patents for key technologies underlying Sender ID are owned by Microsoft. In particular, the key PRA (Purported Responsible Address) algorithm, created for letter authentication, was published by Microsoft under a license that differed from the standard open license. The developer community believed that the license agreement protecting these patents violated the terms of the GPL. Thus, there were doubts that this technology can generally be used in free projects.
Numerous representatives of the open-source community, including the developers of popular mail programs SendMail , QMail and Exim , Apache server developers, participants in the Debian project, as well as the ideologists of the open source movement Eben Moglen and Richard Stallman, spoke against Sender ID.
At one time, in order to find a compromise and continue the standardization process of Sender ID, it was decided to exclude the PRA algorithm from the Sender ID standard, but still continue working on the latter. However, it was not so easy to find a real alternative to PRA.
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Now the problem of using proprietary technology as a standard seems to be solved. The Open Specification Promise program, under which Sender ID technology is published, is compatible with the GPL and allows free use of the source code, including for commercial purposes, as well as its modification — all without the need to sign some kind of licensing agreement with Microsoft.
Microsoft announced the creation of an OSP program in September of this year and is going to extend this “promise of open specifications” to 38 different web technologies.
According to Microsoft, to date, two years after the emergence of the standard Sender ID, this technology protects 5 million mail servers, which generate 36% of all legitimate email traffic on the Internet.
The procedure for adopting Sender ID as a single standard by the IETF organization began more than a year ago, but heated debate immediately erupted around Sender ID. The fact is that patents for key technologies underlying Sender ID are owned by Microsoft. In particular, the key PRA (Purported Responsible Address) algorithm, created for letter authentication, was published by Microsoft under a license that differed from the standard open license. The developer community believed that the license agreement protecting these patents violated the terms of the GPL. Thus, there were doubts that this technology can generally be used in free projects.
Numerous representatives of the open-source community, including the developers of popular mail programs SendMail , QMail and Exim , Apache server developers, participants in the Debian project, as well as the ideologists of the open source movement Eben Moglen and Richard Stallman, spoke against Sender ID.
At one time, in order to find a compromise and continue the standardization process of Sender ID, it was decided to exclude the PRA algorithm from the Sender ID standard, but still continue working on the latter. However, it was not so easy to find a real alternative to PRA.
')
Now the problem of using proprietary technology as a standard seems to be solved. The Open Specification Promise program, under which Sender ID technology is published, is compatible with the GPL and allows free use of the source code, including for commercial purposes, as well as its modification — all without the need to sign some kind of licensing agreement with Microsoft.
Microsoft announced the creation of an OSP program in September of this year and is going to extend this “promise of open specifications” to 38 different web technologies.
According to Microsoft, to date, two years after the emergence of the standard Sender ID, this technology protects 5 million mail servers, which generate 36% of all legitimate email traffic on the Internet.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/4578/
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