On Tue 01/May/2012 13:20:13 +0200 ned+ietf-smtp wrote:
Even if it's a test system or a home system, the way you deploy
that protocol reveals your personal preferences and attitudes
toward it.
I'm sorry, but that's just not true. Like most of the other people
on this list, I'm a developer, and as such I deploy things for
reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with my personal
preferences for how an email server should be run. Additionally, my
experience is routinely based on feedback I get from customers
*when they are having problems*. It is a rare customer indeed that
calls up and says, "We deployed such and such and it is working
fine".
Oh well, yes, attitudes related to your customers' needs may obfuscate
your personal preferences, for some time. My questions assume that
respondents hadn't modified their settings for a good deal of time,
which might be false in some cases. Whether you're happy or
dissatisfied, free or compelled, stable or ever-changing, you answers
would have reflected some kind of tendency.
I may admit it's not very accurate, but the point, IMHO, is to grasp
which is true among "(almost) nobody does that", "there's a small but
non-negligible cluster of operators who'd do that", and "that's being
done by a considerable amount of people".
IMHO, omitting to take the survey, you --in general, non responders--
just express lack of interest in SPF. Am I wrong?
Yes, you are completely wrong.
Do you mean on your case in particular or on why, in general, few
people respond to that survey?
If you want to ask questions of an audience of implementors, I
suggest that you ask them what kind of support for SPF do they
provide in their products and perhaps what they know (or don't
know) about actual customer usage of those features.
Agreed, if I had been more clever I'd have done that. But then,
those who would have taken the burden to answer such more lengthy
questions are probably participating in SPFBIS already. My
questions are easier to ask as well as to answer.
And that's 0 for 3. I am comprehensively well versed in what
features our product has, including the parts of the product I
didn't write, because I am constantly answering complicated
questions about how to accomplish various things using our
product's capabilities.
Similarly, I am constantly receiving and assessing information
from customers about problems they are having as well as what
additional capabilities they want. This is how I decide what
features to add, remove, or enhance.
Since I think about this stuff all the time, it is trivial for me
to regurgitate some subset of it when asked.
I believe that's true for you personally, as your helpfulness can be
readily evinced by your patience in going along with my ruminations on
this subject --thank you for that, btw. However, I doubt anyone at,
say, Microsoft would ever consider such questions, let alone reply to
them. As I said, I'm not clever enough to do that. I'd need real
assistance to carry it out. I'm open to proposals...