From: "NSLM" <notsolm(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com>
You say "Meng no longer cares", he says he does. All I've really
noticed on this list recently is political bitching.
So you've missed all the mails where Meng has been repeatedly called to
explain some tactic he is adopting so that we all know where we're going.
Hardly "political bitching" as you call it - more like a request from the
engine room to know what the captain is up to.
I've played the
game of students union politics, and to be honest the mess I've seen
on this list of late has been very familiar. Lots of fish who believe
that they are so big, when in the end they're tiny little things.
Heh - don't forget that Meng is also a tiny little thing. It's M$ and their
associates who are the giants here. SPF has the chance to become a giant
too, but it won't get far if one of the existing ones "embraces and
extends" it so much that it becomes nothing.
And to accuse us of "student politics" is shameful of you. Some of us are
old enough to be your father and probably have been around industry and
commerce for longer than Meng has been alive.
I have written code for SPF, mainly because Shevek asked me, I spent a
while with my head burried in Exim's source code.
I'm glad to hear it, and I thank you for the work.
You seem to forget that we are possibly a step or three ahead of
Microsoft at the minute, we have the beginings of deployment.
We're not actually any more than a whisker in front of M$ now, thanks to
Mengs somewhat strange belief in where spf should be going. M$ are about to
launch Sender-ID and will use spfv=1 records to do whatever they have cooked
up (with Meng's help) . It will probably get more spfv=1 records published,
but only spfv=2 ones, because it'll be done by people using M$ products who
will be prompted to use the M$ wizard - which only does spfv=2 records. So
to say were a few steps ahead is more than a little optimistic, we're just
about to be overtaken. Hence the outcry about our "leader" teaming up with
the overtaking opposition in the mistaken belief that it'll help us.
As I
understand it far more people publish SPF records than SenderID
records, and if there are OSS implementations of SenderID given the
current MS stance on "Intellectual Property" (NB I am not against
intellectual property, just the wholesale theft of it that a number of
large corporations have managed, thanks to a broken US patent system).
SPF on the other hand definately does have implementations for many
of the large MTAs.
Again - you seem to have missed the point. M$ have specifically said that
they're going for the MUA market - which they dominate. This is obviously
an attempt to gain control of the internets e-mail system with a protocol
which is patented and "privately" licensed.
As I see it we only have a couple of problems:
1) Mail forwarding - SRS does solve this one, but we need massive
deployment before things like "-all" become safe
So does SES, but the jury is still out.
2) Getting more deployment of SPF records - Meng does seem to be
addressing this one, the support of MS for SPFv1 records (even if they
think they can abuse them in the future) would go a long way to help
such things, there are a large number of lemming like MS
administrators who would start posting records if MS said yes.
That is a really dangerous assumption. M$ will only support *existing*
spfv=1 records, and will *not* promote further publication of them. They
will - as I said above - promote their spfv=2 record instead, which will
probably not be useable for existing spfv=1 milters.
I have stayed quiet until now because when it comes down to any of the
major issues, that aren't political infighting, I just plain don't
know, I'm in a world amongst giants. But don't forget that some of us
quiet little midgets have been getting on with the job of coding.
A lot of people have put in a lot of work, and it would be a shame if we
just handed it all to M$ on a platter.
I think now is the time to really fork: let Meng and his group of loyal
lurkers go on and continue microsoft, and let the ones who are putting
real coding and documentation time in spf go on with spf. I call for a
fork.
You really think that a fork will help? Are you nuts?
The community may be divided internally, most of the world won't see
this. Divide properly, and it becomes blatent. Why are people going
to deploy something where the community pushing it isn't even united.
If Mengs doesn't come away from supporting M$, we *need* to have a blatant
and highly publicised fork. Then we can get on with the work in hand for
the benefit of people who want Open Source Standards.
Meng is the original author of SPF, the press see this, whatever a
group of geeks may decide, the press will still see Meng as the voice
worth listening to. There is little or no point in this community
apointing a new representitive for exactly this reason. If we were
larger, a LOT larger, then maybe.
In the event of a fork, with all the publicity it will attrack, there will
be no problem in asserting who actually is representing the spf-development
community -- which may not include *all* previous coders, but will certainly
be the body to create and promote the Open Source Standards version of SPF.
Let's get back to what actually matters, and get ourselves an
experimental RFC we can point to. If there are things wrong with the
RFC they will show themselves, that's the entire point of experimental
status, you make the mistakes, they show themselves, you correct them,
you then push for full RFC status.
We have lost about 6 months due to Meng dancing with M$. spfv=1 would be
approved by now if he hadn't "taken up" with M$, and the publication of
records would have reached the level it is at today as result of the
associated publicity.
We now have a draft in for consideration, but so do M$, so it's a bit late
to be saying that we should just "get on with it" when we've been
effectively stalled before by our current "leader" with his dancing with M$,
so why should we trust him to not do the same again?
Slainte,
JohnP.
johnp(_at_)idimo(_dot_)com
ICQ 313355492