I was one of those people who openly speculated about
Microsoft usurping SPF.
From a PR standpoint I somehow doubt that Microsoft is going to
be known primarily for having created SenderID in ten years time.
There is a PR story here and it is a pretty good one, large
corporation teams up with the leader of a grass roots effort
to kill spam, IETF acts quickly to save the Internet.
Now that story is not a 100% complete version of events, but
it is something that the press can explain and can use to
promote Sender-ID and get it deployed. And everyone comes out
a hero - including the media.
What is more everyone comes off as bigger heros than they do
if they take the go it alone route.
There is a lot to be said for co-opting an organization with
a billion dollar marketing and publicity budget.
Some of you will remember a project I worked on called the Web.
The Web did not win the network hypertext game because it was
the best system or had the best clients. There were many
competitors. At one point the Web team all went up the road
to Neuchattel and saw a demo of Hyper-G and came away asking
what we could do to keep up.
The Web won because it had smarter marketechture. I didn't
spend two months selling the Web to the Clinton-Gore people
on a whim, we knew that the Whitehouse was going online and
whoever set the Whitehouse spec would set the industry spec.
Tim's role in the Web was essentially the same as Meng's role
setting up the SPF group or Linus with Linux. Keeping a bunch
of techies together focused on a project is hard, much harder
in fact than the technical issues.
Sender-ID needs a powerful PR engine to draft behind. The IETF
does not have one, at least not yet. Part of the idea here is
to prove that the IETF is not as irrelevant and hopeless as
its critics believe.
To obtain a WS-Security license all you have to do is to fill
in a Web form. Sure I do not like to have to do this just to
visit the Washington Post or New York Times, but I am prepared
to put up with a minor piece of inconvenience.
I want Microsoft to be placed squarely in the firing line of
all and any patent trolls that come after us. I have never
had any difficulty with a piece of declared IPR, its the
undeclared IPR owned by a law firm we should be worrying about.