Eric,
We're not out to rid the world of patent-laden work, nor are we out to make patent owners rich. The IETF exists to promulgate relevant and correct standards to the Internet Community, and educate people on their intended safe use. There is a fine balance to be had between the two extremes. We are only part of the open source community if what you mean is that participation is open to all, and our documents are freely available to all. Keep this in mind: the vast majority of participants in the IETF are funded by their employers to attend, and MOST of the resulting code is NOT open source.
The history of complex standards is that it takes time to get them done correctly. Take a look at MIME, one of the standards that you used in the construction of your email message. That effort was the outcome of a huge debate that started in 1990 and didn't get out the door until 1992, and that was an argument amongst a relatively small group of people. So just because MARID didn't finish doesn't mean the IETF is done with spam.
Eliot
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