Folks, I'd like to take a moment to talk about money.
A lot of individuals have put a lot of their own time and
money into doing this work for the good of the public and of
the email industry. We have gotten the ball rolling and
enjoy significant momentum.
Unfortunately, unless we find a source of funding for this
work, some of us may not be able to continue in an active
role. In one possible future, it would be wise to turn
leadership of the project over to a company which has the
resources to see it through.
Microsoft is committed to solving the spam problem, and can
dedicate significant resources toward implementation and
deployment. I am comfortable with the SenderID concept and
think it is sufficient to help solve the problem long-term.
If government and businesses in the email ecosystem are
comfortable with Microsoft assuming a leadership role in the
antispam standards space, and if people agree that the
problem is well on its way to being solved, then there is no
need for funding.
If the open community decide that the work we are doing,
some of which is experimental in nature and goes beyond
SenderID, is worth continuing, then we should try to find
funding for it.
I would like to see about $100,000 in funding by the end
of the year. This money will pay for programmer time,
bandwidth, travel, and other expenses.
I'm looking for a volunteer with experience in grant seeking
to help raise money for our antispam effort.
If you have experience in raising money through grants from
corporations, endowments, or government, please respond to
me and I will explain what we need in more detail.
As a starting point, I found this URL.
http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/reference/grantsref.htm
Getting a grant looks like an achievable goal:
http://www.hitachi.org/grants/
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/about/ac48/about_cisco_grant_program09186a0080156d5a.html
http://www.galeschools.com/grant_goldmine/foundations/intel_foundation.htm
If the grants don't work out, we might also just try to
raise $5k each from 20 ISPs and antispam companies.
cheers
meng