Microsoft today announced that it has added the Sender ID Framework email authentication specification 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 that 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.
However, as far as we can tell, nothing has changed. There's no news here.
This promise seems to be exactly the same promise Microsoft made in 2004. It's a promise that did not prevent the MTA Authorization Records in DNS (MARID) working group from failing to reach consensus -- mainly due to deadlock over the IP issue.
... Richi Jennings