From: Rand Wacker Sent: October 14, 2004 3:32 PM
|To echo what Carl said, the open source and commercial
|customers that Sendmail supports are very worried about the
|uncertainty in the authentication space elongating the
|adoption.
<snip>
|Since we were some of the first to suggest that a
|convergance of SPF and Caller ID would be a net win for
|Internet users as a whole, we have continued to work with
|both groups, as well as folks working on DomainKeys, CSV,
|BATV, etc. Our latest set of open source milters we've
|released for testing support both Sender ID, and SPF
|Classic, as well as DomainKeys.
|
|The more we have worked with major sites to help spur
|adoption of these very important technologies, the major
|concern that everyone has (both senders and receivers) is
|the confusion of multiple record types and changing
|standards.
<snip>
|They are looking for consistancy and a clear direction of
|what to do, and they want the tools that are going to give
|them the best experience for their users.
|
|As such, people are going to be authenticating *both* the
|envelope and the headers. I would urge /this/ community to
|think about ways that they could provide backwards
|compatibility for RFC2822 From: checking, as this is
|clearly the desired goal of large sites that are publishing
|nearly identical records. The easiest way to do this is to
|do From: checking against the already-published spfv1
|records (as well as envelope checking).
|
|Please, please, PLEASE, consider modifying the old protocol
|to include a modifier that would allow people to specify
|"only apply to envelope", or consider moving to the most
|recently proposed spf2.0 record that has scope indicators
|for mailfrom, pra, and possibly add from/sender and/or helo.
|
|Senders who publish multiple scopes are not at any risks
|from any pending patents, and it will give the receivers
|the information they need to best help them decide to
|accept your mail.
|
|Separate the PRA scope out in to a separate document and
|leave it for Microsoft to flog at their will, if you wish.
|
|Several major Internet players have asked you for these
|changes, either directly on this list or by their
|publication of multiple records. Please consider their
|requests.
Rand,
I greatly appreciate your frankness in expressing the
wishes of both Sendmail and your major customers.
I understand that system administrators are interested in
consistency and many consider the concerns over the patent
and license to be abstract issues.
Let me be very upfront. The problem for many, including
myself is the perception, right or wrong that Meng has
become "beholden" to Microsoft.
As an aside, Meng I urge you to put forward your
conversations with Microsoft, so that folks can clearly see
what has been going on.
I believe if the request you are making had been put by
Carl on behalf of AOL, along with yourself on behalf of
your clients and perhaps someone from EarthLink, the whole
issue may have been looked at it differently.
In fact, earlier on when this issue first came up, I asked
Meng on another list for Carl's views on this whole
exercise, but at the time the request fell to the ground.
Instead the request was framed as coming from Microsoft, so
that folks were being asked to bend in their favor.
Frankly, there is little or no interest on my part in doing
much to accommodate Microsoft, given their equivocation on
the patent, their refusal to amend the license so that it
is compatible with the open standards alliance model which
helped kill the deal and the apparent desire to simply take
over the whole shebang as evidenced by their filing with
the FTC.
Were these matters to be rectified, this would change the
water under the beam in my eyes. In the circumstances, it
really is incumbent for Microsoft to come to the table and
clear the air as quite frankly, that is where the problem
lies and not with the SPF community.
Having said this, at day's end I am certain a solution will
be found, so we can move forward through both the technical
and political minefield.
John
John Glube
Toronto, Canada
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