Despite the miserable failure suffered by Microsoft’s efforts to win support for its Sender I.D. e-mail authentication system with such august institutions the Apache project, the Debian project, and even the IETF’s authentication working group all roundly rejecting Sender I.D. on technical as well as legal and moral grounds, and following AOL’s reversal of its rejection of Sender I.D., Microsoft has renewed its bid for e-mail authentication domination.

Speaking at the Federal Trade Commission’s E-mail Authentication Summit, Microsoft’s David Kaefer, with its patent licensing office, claimed that the Open Source sector, of which Apache and Debian are part, was “ignoring ‘commercial realities’ that require his employer to retain substantial control over its patents.” [Translation: “The commercial reality is that we want to own the space and reap all the profit from that ownership."]

Kaefer added that “Intellectual property is not just an inconvenience that can be ignored. We’re starting to see patent issues and Open Source issues coming together…There are commercial realities that come along with that.”

Countered Apache Software Foundation Vice-President Daniel Quinlan, “Key Internet standards currently are freely available, [with] no patent licensing from Microsoft. We want to make sure it stays that way for e-mail and other important parts of the Internet.” The Apache and Debian projects’ rejection of Sender I.D… [Continued]