Microsoft Promises Sender ID Remains Open, But There's No News Here

Microsoft today announced that it has added the Sender ID Framework Email Authentication spec. to the list of Microsoft technologies covered under the Microsoft Open Specification Promise (OSP). This essentially means that Microsoft promises not to take action to protect its patents and other intellectual property (IP) related to these technologies.

The idea is to remove objections to implementing against published "standards" that are based on the fear of Microsoft will sue the developer. This was the main stumbling block preventing Sender ID from becoming an Internet standard in 2004 -- the Purported Responsible Address (PRA) algorithm was patented.

Big whoop. As far as I can tell, nothing has changed. There's no news here. Move along.

This promise seems to be exactly the same promise as was made by Microsoft in 2004. It's a promise that didn't prevent the MARID working group from failing to reach consensus -- mainly due to deadlock over the IP issue.