Hi Meng,
as I was the one soliciting the first open suggestion of forking SPF, I
want to place some comments:
Meng Weng Wong [mengwong(_at_)dumbo(_dot_)pobox(_dot_)com] wrote:
So I would ask people to keep in mind that the New SPF that
was presented on this list was not much more than a
proposal. It was meant to be a starting point for
discussion, not some finished thing for people to vote yes
or no.
Of course we all knew that The New SPF was not finished when you announced
it, but what you're saying now is not exactly how your introductory
message came over. And you usually don't call something "The New $Thing"
if it's just a starting point for discussion with "The Old $Thing"
actually still being "The $Thing" (anyone seen the movie? *g*) for the
foreseeable future.
Now you finally gave us a proper perspective of the process, so we're now
able to judge The New SPF's status a lot better. It would have been very
considerate if you had kept us up to date a bit, so we wouldn't have had
to speculate. Thanks for doing it now.
Fourth, once a draft is submitted to the IETF, change
control rests formally with the IETF; Microsoft does not
dictate the content of the new specification. Rough
consensus drives change.
Well, I know why you deem it important to have Microsoft onboard, and I
agree. But I think *this* kind of appeasement to the SPF community
(including me) is risky in its own way. There's only so much risk of XML
support becoming mandatory for SPF parsers that some in this community
(including me) are willing to take. I guess it's a real tightrope walk.
Because the IETF is an open forum, anyone can join the MXCOMP
mailing list and make their opinions known.
I have already subscribed and will voice my objections to the XML thing in
a subtle but decided manner. (For anyone who's interested, send a message
to <ietf-mxcomp-request(_at_)imc(_dot_)org> with "subscribe" in the body.)
Therefore, any discussion of forking, etc, is premature, and
frankly looks a bit paranoid. It would be more constructive
to help the merged spec develop in the direction you want it
to go, than to try to oppose it on the basis of any real or
imagined shortcomings.
I'm not opposing The New SPF per se, but the direction in which it seems
to be going (although I now understand why you're pushing it that way).
Since spf-discuss appeared to having become an announcement-only list
regarding your participation in it, I figured it was all pretty much
decided. I guess I was not the only one having that impression.
Things like this matter much more in the long run:
20040607-14:36:24 mengwong(_at_)dumbo:~% dnstxt verizon.net
v=spf1 ip4:206.46.170.0/24 ip4:206.46.128.33
ip4:206.46.128.101 ip4:209.84.13.21 ip4:209.84.13.20 -all
Depends on where you're coming from. If you're pointing out that
important parties are publishing SPF records in the plain format
specifically, then I agree. If you're pointing out that important parties
are publishing SPF records at all, regardless of which format they use,
then I don't agree. But that's just my personal assessment.
In any case, making more parties publish SPFv1 records *now* is a (if not
*the*) right thing to do.