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RE: What the lawyers and suits think

2004-09-13 13:41:51


On Mon, 13 Sep 2004, Hallam-Baker, Phillip wrote:

Its called mindshare. A case in point is S/MIME vs PGP. The format
dispute is an irrelevance from a technical point of view, but the
failure of S/MIME to build a deployment constituency and the failure
of PGP to gain industry support has meant that neither has been
a success.

You bring a very important example here. I believe it was IETF failure
to achieve consensus and unified standard for signing mail that has 
results in the above deployment issue. We appear to be headed on the same
path based on the announcement by list chairs with their intent to proceed
with both SPF classic mail-from and SenderID PRA scopes without any one
of these scopes having gained consensus by the WG and leaving it up
to the deployment base to decide what would be used. 

This is so much like the S/MIME vs PGP situation (involving same two large 
groups of internet users) that it hurts me see us repeat the same mistake.
I was truly hoping this WG would be able to bring both corporate big boys 
(ala SenderID supporters who also the guys supporting S/MIME) with 
opensource geek camp (ala SPF supporters who are also support mostly PGP).

We really should try to come to one solution that has to be mandated to
be supported by this IETF group (or more then one that should be mandated)
or we'll end up in same situation and the new SPF2.0 will fail in achieving
the deployment in either of the scopes.

-- 
William Leibzon
Elan Networks
william(_at_)elan(_dot_)net


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