End of free email for non-Microsoft users? (Score 2, Interesting)

One of the focus areas of the joint statement against spam by AOL, MS & Yahoo is the redesign of commercial email standards. It is critically important that the Open Source community rises to the challenge, and forms an alliance to ensure that the new measures for fighting spam are incorporated in open standards for mail delivery. It is the unofficial policy of Microsoft (see the "Halloween documents") to "enrich" open standards to combat open source software. The "war on spam" declared today is an important initiative, but poses the threat of ending the availability of open source email solutions. This could mean the end of free email if AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo are left in charge of email standards.