Meng Weng Wong [mengwong(_at_)dumbo(_dot_)pobox(_dot_)com] wrote:
Perhaps I haven't been as forthcoming as possible, but there are a
couple of good reasons for that: first, if I were to give a full report
on every conversation I have, I wouldn't have time to get any work done.
Second, do the people on this list really expect me to lay out my
strategy for getting what we want, at the potential expense of our
opponent, on a public mailing list which our opponent is monitoring?
Nobody even remotely requested "a full report on every conversation" of
yours. But there's a monumental difference between giving "a full report
on every conversation" and giving rare and vague hints on why it might be
a good idea to trust you and do nothing while various key features of SPF
(classic) appear to get traded in for some backing from a untrustworthy
company like Microsoft.
I do not subscribe to the idea of doing politics the dirty way, as
necessary politics per se may be. But if you choose going the dirty
route, with horse-trading and secret plans and all, mistrust and
resistance is what you'll have to expect, even from your supposed own
camp. SPF classic has always been developed in an open process, so it's
only natural that at least some of its contributors find it hard to see
painful amounts of horse-trading going on and do nothing, at your
instruction.
On Tue, Oct 26, 2004 at 11:27:54PM +0200, Julian Mehnle wrote:
To *which* problem?
I guess the problem many here see is that Meng's objectives seem to
have changed from what SPF (classic) originally did, which was
stopping envelope sender forgery. Meng hasn't been pursuing that aim
any more for a long time.
Also, the sky is green.
Yes, if you negligently pollute it with confusion and do nothing to clear
it up, it appears so.
The point is that even though you might have invested considerable efforts
into trying to get Microsoft to adopt SPF's original well thought-out
features (which *do* the originially aimed for job of preventing envelope
sender forgery), except from banning this hideous XML thing from the
radar, your plan seems to have failed.
Microsoft now has a great chance of getting away with effectively (albeit
not legally) claiming the Sender-ID proposal as their own (see the press
coverage, "Sender-ID" is mostly quoted as being solely MS's invention) and
even hijacking the existing v=spf1 records for their own weird
interpretation of checking "Return-Path:" headers or whatever.
And even now we still lack a clear statement from you whether you are
confident with the resulting Sender-ID, or whether Sender-ID doesn't serve
your goals and you plan to do something *effective* about it, e.g. moving
forward with a distinct SPF project or something.
If you clearly, concretely, and publicly (no way around that in a public
community) stated just once what your goals are, the members of the
community could decide whether it is worth to keep following this project
of yours any further.
People don't like being baited and appeased forever. At least I don't.