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A Man, A Plan, and a Evil Empire
Let's say you're fed up with email spam and trash all in your inbox. Let's say you're a computer engineer. You decide to do something about it. So you form a company, come up with some technology. People say you've got a great idea. It could kill spam, make email more useful again. What could go wrong? How about having too good of an idea?
Meng Wong was doing such a good job that he attracted some of the big names in the business. Microsoft met with Wong in 2004. They basically said "Hey. You got a great idea. Let's combine it with what we're doing and promote it together. We'll give it away as a standard."
You can read Wong's story over at MSNBC.com It sounds one-sided, but the gist doesn't. If I understand the article correctly, SenderID (and Wong as well, evidently) got derailed just by being associated with Microsoft.
Microsoft taking over entire industries is not new, nor unique. But if new technology is killed simply by association with Microsoft? Well, that's a new twist on the old "Evil Empire" spin.
He was the right guy, with the right idea -- but he was Wong for Microsoft.
The article only touches the reason, why SenderID was rejected: the patents microsoft has.
Microsoft promised to allow everyone to use the Patents for Free. But such a promise is not legally binding, and the refused to sign a legally binding contract.
Most of todays email-servers run Open Source Software. One of the main goals of Open Source is to allow sharing of the software. Ms would only grant the right to use the patents to the direct enduser, not to the people who shared their software.
And lets make a little analogy:
You got a friend, who always hits you in the nuts when you start looking for stars. One day, he says "look up there, i can see the great bear". Would you try to locate it ?