I think the biggies wait it out for now, as there is a 'replacement' in
the form of senderid.
[...]
frankly i'm afraid that senderid will win simply because
microsoft has the money to make it win.
I am very afraid of this also. I fear that many anti-spam products might have
to actually remove support for SPF, because big domains might only publish a
SenderID DNS record (because they trust Microsoft solution more or because they
have pressure to only support Microsoft solution), and the anti-spam products
do not want to sign SenderID license.
See my previous post where I suggest maybe the best solution is to lobby for
reusing the SPF DNS record for SenderID and lobby for Microsoft making it
explicit that their license does not cover uses of the DNS record which are not
claimed by their patent.
Then we will have no choice but to look towards making something in public
domain (e.g. SenderKeys) which replaces the manual DNS records with automated
deployment.
I hope though that either MARID (the ietf workgroup pushing for senderid
if i'm correct) will come to it's senses, and either make senderid
acceptable to the whole internet, not just the Inc's and .coms + they
put some envelope from checking in there, or failing that that spf will
carry on regardless of senderid.
I fear that SPF can not carry on well if SenderID uses it's own DNS record, for
reasons stated above.
And I fear we have no influence in IETF regarding the SenderID license.
I do not see a good answer. I proposed something but was told that community
here is not interested. So I just sit back, wait and see what happens now I
guess.