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| For Now, Sender ID is Dead and MARID Shuts Down |
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Thursday, September 23 2004 @ 03:23 PM EDT
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I received the following from Yakov Shafranovich, co-founder and software architect with SolidMatrix Technologies, Inc., and former co-chair of the Anti-Spam Research Group (ASRG) of the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF): The IETF announced that they are planning on closing down MARID, the working group tasked with developing an email authentication standard called "Sender-ID". Shortly following that a formal "closing" announcement was issued by the IESG, the governing body of the IETF. What this means is that the working group has been formally closed, but the process is not finished. But for now Sender ID is dead.
On a side note, the Sender ID name itself might be short lived. Right before the MARID WG closed, there was a discussion about an existing trademark on the Sender ID name and the WG chairs wanted to drop that name. Of course, it is kind of funny if Microsoft finds itself on the wrong side of an IPR lawsuit, but Microsoft have told the MARID WG a few month ago that their lawyers believe that the trademark is invalid. While Microsoft was willing to take their chances, the IETF and ISOC wasn't. Now that the MARID WG is dead, Microsoft may choose to go back to its old name "Caller ID", or perhaps take a second look at that trademark and pick a brand new name.
Anyway, reading through the email announcement about the closure, one needs to keep in mind that the IETF has its own subculture and terminology. The IETF operates by consensus - an agreement among its members. In this specific case, the IETF cited the apparent inability to reach an agreement among the members of the MARID WG as the reason for closure. In other words, the IETF failed to get an agreement from all participants on a single standard for email authentication. The IPR issues from Microsoft's license on Sender ID and incompatability with open source has been cited as well. Specifically, one of the problems is that the IETF is a technical body, not well suited for evaluating non-technical issues such as IPR.
While talking about the IPR issues, it is worthwhile to mention a recent conversation I had with someone from the the US Patent Office. If you ever wonder why so many crazy software patents are granted, a little inside information might be helpful. Patent examiners operate on a quota basis - there is a specific number of patent applications that each examiner must review every week. It starts out at about two applications per week, and goes up from there. My source at the USPTO told me that fulfilling the quota takes precedence over potential prior art. That means that if the patent examiner has a choice between spending an extra week looking at prior art, and approving the patent as is, he or she must approve the patent in order to fulfill the quota. I personally cannot vouch for this information since I don't work at the USPTO, but if it is true, it might explain some things.
In any case, going back to MARID and Sender ID, even though the WG has been formally closed, these proposals are not dead. The IETF wants to proceed with the existing proposals: SPF, Sender ID and some related ones such as CSV and BATV. Instead of formal standards, they will let several proposals proceed as experimental protocols making sure that they do not interfere with anything else on the Internet but without formal standards approval. This is called the "EXPERIMENTAL" track. According to the original announcement this will be coordinated by the IETF to make sure they do not break anything, but that's it. They want people to experiment and deploy these, gathering real-world experience before reconsidering standardization. Eventually if any single standard wins, the IETF may choose to formally standardize it.
What it means practically is that the IETF will not standardize anything but rather let the market choose (which is what some like Paul Vixie have been suggesting for some time). The issue of course is that some of these protocols will be mutually exclusive and will not have as much deployment as a single standard would have, but people will experiment and eventually a winner might or might not merge. All the IETF will be doing is taking a hands-off approach and making sure nothing breaks. Of course, all of this assumes that these proposals will stay within the IETF. Given the bad history with now-dead MARID WG, both the FOSS world and the commercial world might be hesistant to continue working within the IETF framework, and may choose to strike out on their own or go a different standards body as some like Phil Hallam-Baker of Verisign have been suggesting ( http://archives.listbox.com/spf-discuss@v2.listbox.com/200409/0672.html ).
The FOSS world and the SPF community might want to continue developing the standard on their own, while the commercial world seems to be leaning towards going to a standard body. Of course one must keep in mind that most other standard bodies do not have open membership policies like IETF does and do charge for membership (yes, the IETF has conference fees also, but not mandatory). The IPR issues are also not going away, especially considering the analysis posted by John Levine
( http://www.circleid.com/article/756_0_1_0_C/" ) and others about Microsoft's patent application applying to a very broad range of anti-spam technologies.
So for now, we are stuck with several competing proposals and the market has to decide which one to support. There are also crypto solutions in the works which might be better such as DomainKeys and others, currently being discussed informally in the IETF. Given that the FOSS world is not supporting Sender ID anytime soon, SPF may be looked upon as a reasonable alternative. But one must keep in mind that many commercial companies have already invested significant resources, both financial and PR, in Sender ID, and Microsoft may choose to continue promoting it. This of course, will just continue the clash between the FOSS world and Microsoft, which in the long run is not good for anyone. Unlike what George Orwell wrote in 1984, war is not peace.
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, September 23 2004 @ 03:52 PM EDT |
| Corrections here Please. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: PolR on Thursday, September 23 2004 @ 03:56 PM EDT |
| . [ Reply to This | # ]
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- Unusually heavy trading in SCOX today... - Authored by: Groklaw Lurker on Thursday, September 23 2004 @ 04:34 PM EDT
- OT - Another poke in the eye for SCO? - Authored by: Jude on Thursday, September 23 2004 @ 05:17 PM EDT
- Where did Darl get his first "We Own Unix" ideas... here is a thought on that! - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, September 23 2004 @ 05:28 PM EDT
- SCO Still Has Programmers On Its Payroll! - Authored by: Jadeclaw on Thursday, September 23 2004 @ 06:25 PM EDT
- Interesting MS Tactic with patents (Sony vs Immersion) - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, September 23 2004 @ 07:07 PM EDT
- OO Design? - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, September 23 2004 @ 07:38 PM EDT
- OO Design? - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, September 24 2004 @ 05:14 AM EDT
- Re: MARID to close - Authored by: grundy on Thursday, September 23 2004 @ 09:14 PM EDT
- SCO - Caldera Reorganisation - Storyboard - Authored by: soronlin on Friday, September 24 2004 @ 04:08 AM EDT
- OT: SCOG Response To Novell Due Today (9/24) - Authored by: Dave23 on Friday, September 24 2004 @ 06:18 AM EDT
- OT here please - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, September 24 2004 @ 09:14 AM EDT
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, September 23 2004 @ 04:04 PM EDT |
In 1994, Microsoft created a proprietary BBS-like online service, and called it
MSN - The Microsoft Network (MSN was later relaunched into what you know today:
an ISP).
Of course it failed because everybody else in the world was signing up for the
very open and free Internet, but lots of companies were paying many thousands of
dollars to be a part of Microsoft's proprietary online shopping mall. Sad story
of greed and failure.
This was Microsoft's third attempt to take ownership of the Internet (the second
was ActiveX), and it failed again.
I guess information does want to be free, doesn't it?[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Karl Prince on Thursday, September 23 2004 @ 04:09 PM EDT |
Well a least for the moment...
Phillip Hallam-Baker from Verisign seem's to have kicked off an interesting
debate in the SPF discussion lists
http://archives.listbox.com/spf-discuss@v2.listbox.com/200409/0701.html
| People can either attempt to prosecute a vendetta
| against Microsoft or they can make stopping spam
| the first priority.
It's interesting the consensus is that both are important, not exclusive, but
Microsoft is by far the bigger threat to the Internet
This comment from Phillip is later verified not to be the official line of
Verisign.
Verisign, the company that brought us the "Site Finder" service that
broke anti-spam blacklists.
Verisign, the company that thinks it owns the Internet (from what I can tell),
they will probably be put right by Bill.G that they don't, coz he does.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: blacklight on Thursday, September 23 2004 @ 04:09 PM EDT |
"Patent examiners operate on a quota basis - there is a specific number of
patent applications that each examiner must review every week. It starts out at
about two applications per week, and goes up from there. My source at the USPTO
told me that fulfilling the quota takes precedence over potential prior art.
That means that if the patent examiner has a choice between spending an extra
week looking at prior art, and approving the patent as is, he or she must
approve the patent in order to fulfill the quota. I personally cannot vouch for
this information since I don't work at the USPTO, but if it is true, it might
explain some things." PJ
I checked the USPTO site out of curiosity when I learned back in Spring 2004
that it was looking for patent examiners. I went through the online
application, and found two essay questions on how I would manage time and how I
would meet deadlines, but none on how I would properly investigate a patent
application - In other words, the USPTO doesn't give two hoots about quality.
Add in the fact that the USPTO trumpets its patent application fees as a revenue
producer for Uncle Sam, and you have in USPTO a pretty corrupt operation:
"monopoly for a fee".
On a personal note, I aborted the application once I got the info I was looking
for. I have nothing but disgust and contempt for the way the USPTO is run.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Groklaw Lurker on Thursday, September 23 2004 @ 04:24 PM EDT |
"...So for now, we are stuck with several competing proposals and the
market has to decide which one to support..."
The market has in most cases, eventually elevated the best technology to
dominance. Historically though, this has sometimes taken several generations due
to the grants of monopolies by monarchs and governments.
Internet time is far swifter, and we have relatively little evidence to indicate
whether the Internet is capable of elevating the superior technology to
dominance over inferior technologies pushed and supported by private interests.
What little that comes to mind though, is encouraging. Apache for one, Linux for
another (though Linux hasn't yet achieved real dominance) and Perl, PHP, TCL and
others may also come to mind as having achieved some form of dominance over
their microcosyms.
We will wait and watch I guess, fighting the good fight every step of the way.
GL
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| Authored by: eggplant37 on Thursday, September 23 2004 @ 04:48 PM EDT |
So sad, Darth Gates doesn't get his email authentication standard. Another
victory for the Rebel Alliance!![ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: fred fleenblat on Thursday, September 23 2004 @ 04:49 PM EDT |
While sender id seems to have failed for political reasons, i'm actually more
concerned that the committee failed because there were some technical reasons
that meant sender id wasn't really worth fighting for and that's why they put
the whole thing out to pasture.
The first one that comes to mind is that spammers/viruses often land in your
mailbox because the machine of someone you know, who has a legitimate mail
account, gets zombied or infected and starts spewing malware. If sender id
tells me exactly who it was and that they are a real person with a real PGP key
and real account at a reputable ISP what's the value add?
The second point is that spam/viruses don't just appear randomly with
statistical properties that can be managed by fiddling with some servers.
Spammers and virus writers are actually fairly intelligent people who will REACT
to a threat by changing their tactics. Deploying a single technology slowly
across the entire installed base of mail servers is a laugh--by the time it's
installed and reliable the enemy will have found five ways around the whole
thing.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: ray08 on Thursday, September 23 2004 @ 04:52 PM EDT |
Hey, if M$ can't play nice, let them take their rich toys and go home! I'll take
a "free" email system over a M$ concoction anyday. So there, M$, just
take your stupid patents and go away (mad or not, just go!)
Meanwhile, the rest of the world will improvise a new solution.
---
Caldera is toast! And Groklaw is the toaster! (with toast level set to BURN)[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, September 23 2004 @ 04:56 PM EDT |
"That means that if the patent examiner has a choice between spending an
extra week looking at prior art, and approving the patent as is, he or she must
approve the patent in order to fulfill the quota. I personally cannot vouch for
this information since I don't work at the USPTO, but if it is true, it might
explain some things."
Tip to those fighting s/w patents ... if the above is true, then rather than
mess about tackling one patent at a time, you should go right for the jugular
and seek to have *ALL* patents that have been granted by this wonky system
revoked. Given the immense harm that bogus patents are doing to the industry,
there ought to be plenty of people and companies with standing to file such a
suit.
Start with a FOI request to the patent office to get copies of their employee
handbook, and any other documents that would substantiate the above claim.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: davidwr_ on Thursday, September 23 2004 @ 05:59 PM EDT |
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for
limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective
Writings and Discoveries"
-US Constitution, Article II Section
8
How soon before a federal judge decides that the current regime does
just the opposite, and orders an overhaul?[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, September 23 2004 @ 08:41 PM EDT |
If a given patent examiner has been found to have released an invalid patent for
reason of inadequate search on prior art, is it possible to call for a review of
*all* patents that examiner has been involved with approving?
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, September 24 2004 @ 12:14 AM EDT |
PJ I have to say the person you talked to brings some questions about any fast
track quota for patents.
Published on the Eolas website:[copyright(s) Eolas Technologies].
Eolas Patent 6,616,701
Filed on: May 23, 1998
Issued on: Sept 9, 2003
That is about 5 years 4 months.
Eolas Patent 4,847,604
Filed on: Aug of 1987
Issued on: July 11, 1989
The shortest time published; just under two years.
Microsoft's XML patent.[copyright(s) Microsoft Corp].
Microsoft Patent 6,687,897
Filed on: June 21, 2000
Issued on: Sept 21, 2004
That is 4 years 3 months.
I don't question bad patents; however, I question this person from (claims) the
USPTO, information on quotas.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, September 24 2004 @ 02:37 AM EDT |
And since the patent office is backlogged, hiring enough
people to catch up with the backlog, would be better for
all, than this policy of pushing the applications through.
Whilst this is going on we do know that IBM is for a
dramatic change of patents.
IBM has the money, and we as the general masses, and
software developers, can to a big degree represent the
general census.
That should make us once again a great combination. Our
lawers should talk with IBM in regards of proposing new
bills to bring the patent office UP TO DATE. We can then
mail our representatives our support for the new bills.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: yellowsnow314159 on Friday, September 24 2004 @ 07:02 AM EDT |
Sun's plans...and how they could go:
http://comment.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020505,39167442,00.htm
Already read about this yesterday (probably on CNET) but this commenting article
makes for sure an interresting reading. Sorry if there have been a lot of posts
about it already. I didn't have time to keep up this week.
So I guess we were all right when we thought Sun was going to attack Linux when
they sattled with M$.
The writer of this article (George Colony, CEO, Forrester Research) forgets to
mention a 5th problem Sun might have to face. Groklaw might be an example of (if
not on of the main drives behind) the (political) momentum the Linux communitie
has build up over the past few years. Sun might find itself in an ordeal when it
takes Red Hat or Linux as a whole head on. If there will be only a shred of FUD
in their campain to come, it will be debunked. I wonder what will remain of
their 'good' customers relations when their credibilitie goes down (the drain).
They should at least have learned from history that addopting M$ FUD tactics
doesn't pay of in the end (though I can't see how they could compete in another
way with Linux). Than again, Sun is dying dinosaur in my opinion so I didn't
expect them to do anything wise. Seems like the beginning of the end for Sun to
me, now they decided to not go with Linux but against it.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Lionel_Hutz on Friday, September 24 2004 @ 09:59 AM EDT |
See here for a
snopes write-up. The short and skinny is NO the space shuttle was not designed
around old Roman chariot specs.
Cheers
---
Hutz: Well, Your
Honor. We've plenty of hearsay and conjecture. Those are kinds of evidence. [ Reply to This | # ]
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- An old canard - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, September 26 2004 @ 03:28 PM EDT
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| Authored by: Latesigner on Friday, September 24 2004 @ 11:04 AM EDT |
| Microsoft got this wrong. [ Reply to This | # ]
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