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Carrying on with the SPF project, this time with a clear charter

2004-10-27 17:45:43
Hi all.

Please read this message to the end, as that's where I'm making my point.

My personal goal that made me join the SPF project about a year ago has
always been exactly to prevent envelope sender forgery.  I didn't join to
solve the spam problem, and I didn't join to solve the phishing problem.
Although I agree that those are problems that also need to be solved, I
think SPF should not try to be a jack of all trades but should instead
concentrate on what it is best suited for.  After we have achieved that,
we can try to solve the other problems.  That also implies that I consider
SPFv1 to still be Senders Permitted From, and not Sender Policy Framework.

My personal problems I have had and still have with the SPF project and
the decisions Meng has made regarding the cooperation with Microsoft are
1. that Meng has in my opinion been too secretive about his strategy, and
more importantly 2. that the SPF project has been going on without clearly
defined goals, which allowed Meng's (and thus the project's) goals to
change over time or at least to give the impression of changing.

Even though I still disagree on Meng's decision to get involved with
Microsoft and Sender-ID, after some serious discussions and some serious
thinking today I have come to the impression that Meng's goals still are
largely congruent with mine:

Meng Weng Wong [mengwong(_at_)dumbo(_dot_)pobox(_dot_)com] wrote:
Despite working with MS, my objectives remain exactly the same as
everybody else's: to get SPF Classic working so we can solve forgery
soon and spam eventually.

...that is -- and I hope I am interpreting this right --: solve _envelope
sender_ forgery soon, and spam (and header phishing) eventually.

On these grounds, I think most of the SPF Classic fans who have expressed
their dissatisfaction with allegedly shifted project goals should be able
to agree that pushing for the goals stated by Meng above _from within the
SPF project_ is considerably more promising than doing a fork of the
project.

In any case, it's time to put all that behind us and get back to coding.
I'm sure we can all agree on that.

Alright, but this time I am not going to take the risk of wasting my time
by working for goals that are not roughly mine.

So I propose that we (or Meng) create a public _charter_ for the SPF
project that clearly and concretely states the true project goals.  As
some of us are working on a new website for the project, that's probably
where the charter should be situated.

Any seconds?


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