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Summary of SPF Organization Poll

2004-11-05 14:06:26

Below is the summary of the SPF Organization Poll, hopefully this will
help in better organizing this community for the future and in drafting 
an official charter for SPF Community.

In the summary text the following words have special meaning and represent 
number of people who answered question in certain way (as percent from 
total number of people who answered the question) based on results listed 
at 
http://archives.listbox.com/spf-discuss(_at_)v2(_dot_)listbox(_dot_)com/200411/0136.html
   
   FULL AGREEMENT on     :   100% in favor
   CONSENSUS on          :   80% - 99% in favor
   ROUGH CONSENSUS on    :   65% - 79% in favor
   MAJORITY view on      :   50% - 64% in favor
   LARGE MINORITY view   :   25% - 49% in favor

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GENERAL SUMMARY
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There is ROUGH CONSENSUS among active participants of SPF-Discuss mail 
list that SPF Community will benefit from being formally organized into 
structure similar to IETF Working Group led by about 5 people who should 
take role as co-chairs and help community reach consensus on issues 
regarding development of SPF protocol specification and other tasks
related to SPF standardization and adoption.

There is FULL AGREEMENT that SPF Community as an organized group should 
work to ensure wide-range adaption of SPF and in that regard should communicate
with software vendors and other companies to encourage them to use SPF and 
should communicate with MEDIA to explain issues important to SPF community
and to ensure continued public interest in SPF.

There is ROUGH CONSENSUS in SPF Community that we should continue to work 
in helping those who publish SPF records and that community should maintain 
official SPF website in part to help new and existing SPF users. MAJORITY
also believe that while helping developers to create SPF implementation
libraries is very important and that the developers should be encouraged
to participate and be part SPF Community, the SPF Community official 
position should not be to promote any one single SPF implementation library.

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SUMMARY FOR EACH QUESTION
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0. MAIN QUESTION:
  Do you believe that "SPF Community" needs to evolve into more structured 
  organization (rather then the current form of individuals participation 
  on the spf-discuss list with Meng as a chair of the group) and are you
  willing to delegate responsibility for administering further development 
  of SPF to this organization? 

Total Number Responding: 25
  YES answers: 20 (80%)
  NO answers:   5 (20%)

Summary:
  There is a CONSENSUS among active participants of SPF-discuss mail
  list that "SPF Community" will benefit from better organized structure
  that can assume position as official caretaker of SPF protocol
  documents and coordinate other activities related to SPF and there
  is willingness of people to get involved in this organization.

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Question:
  1. Do you prefer to have organization with
    a. Strong member-chosen decision making board (i.e. Parliament system)
       which takes input from community but can make all the decisions OR 
    b. Loose leadership committee with functions limited to facilitating 
       discussion and deciding on the consensus (i.e. IETF WG model)

Total Number Responding: 19
  "A" answers:  5 (26%)
  "B" answers: 14 (74%)

Summary:
  There is a ROUGH CONSENSUS that SPF work should be done in a way similar
  to IETF Working Group and that SPF leadership should encourage discussions
  and help in determining and supporting positions which have consensus of 
  the community but should not make policies and key decisions on their own

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Question:
  2. Please give approximate number of people that you believe to be
     on the organization's oversight board:
    a. 2-3
    b. 4-6
    c. 7-10

Total Number Responding: 20
  "A" answers:  5  (25%)
  "B" answers: 15  (75%)
  "C" answers:  0  (0%)

Summary:
  There is a ROUGH CONSENSUS that SPF community should be led by group of 
  4-6 individuals. Its notable however that LARGE MINORITY believes that 
  group should be smaller and so numbers "4" or "5" are the ones most 
  closely representing what community wants. There were also several
  (at least 3) comments that number of leaders should be odd which leaves 
  number "5" as best number of people to be in SPF leadership group.

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Question:
  3a. Do you believe that organization function should include
      maintenance of SPF website?

Total Number Responding: 20
  YES answers: 17 (85%)
  NO answers:   3 (15%)

Summary:
  There is a CONSENSUS that SPF community should be actively involved in
  development and maintenance of official SPF website.

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Question:
  3b. Do you believe that organization function should include
      publishing official SPF protocol documents?

Total Responding: 20
  YES answers: 20 (100%)
  NO answers:   0 (0%)

Summary:
  There is FULL AGREEMENT that SPF Community should continue to develop 
  and publish official SPF standard protocol documents and it should
  be the primary goal of SPF to insure the published SPF protocol 
  documents properly represent consensus of the community and that
  SPF protocol is adapted and used as intended.

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Question:
  3c. Do you believe that organization function should include
      sponsoring development of SPF implementation libraries?

Total Responding: 19
  YES answers: 8 (42%)
  NO answers: 11 (58%)

Summary:
  There is NO CONSENSUS in SPF Community on if it should be directly 
  involved in development of libraries for SPF Protocol with MAJORITY
  VIEW that it should not be involved in official way. I sense that
  the majority think that we should continue to encourage and help in 
  development of libraries and implementations and provide help and
  forum for developers to work together but should not designate any
  one library as being official work of SPF Community

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Question:
  3d. Do you believe that organization function should include
      providing support to end-users who publish SPF records?

Total Responding: 20 
  YES answers: 14 (70%)
  NO answers:   6 (30%)

Summary:
  There is ROUGH CONSENSUS that SPF Community should continue to provide
  help and support to those who publish SPF records but there appears to
  be view of many that it should be a secondary function for SPF community 
  as a way to help in adoption of SPF but support should not become primary
  role of SPF organizational activity.

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Question:
  3e. Do you believe that organization function should include
      providing official SPF position on given topics (per request
      of media, government, etc)?

Total Responding: 20 
  YES answers: 20 (100%)
  NO answers:   0 (0%)

Summary:
  There is FULL AGREEMENT that SPF Community should provide official
  position on topics related to SPF and use media to ensure continued
  public interest in SPF.

Note:
  I sense based on 100% positive response to question of providing official
  position of SPF to media and based on number of other threads that 
  current situation with media and government talking primarily only 
  with Meng is not acceptable to majority here. It appears that people
  want to be able to have a say in what is communicated to outside world
  about SPF and ensure that those communications represent consensus 
  of this group on important topics. 

  While its impossible for every media communication to require a
  discussion on the list, I believe the best would be for SPF Community
  to designate several people (2-3) who as a group  would able to write 
  answers to the media requests but for important questions they would 
  ask the list and provide their "draft" answers and then request comments 
  to insure their draft answer properly meets the consensus of the group.

  I also sense that people want to be able to see a list of all media 
  publications where SPF community has been consulted or where people
  involved in SPF have provided their position or given interview.

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Question:
  3f. Do you believe that organization function should include
      communication with software vendors and companies in regards
      to SPF deployment?

Total Responding: 20 
  YES answers: 20 (100%)
  NO answers:   0 (0%)

Summary:
  There is FULL AGREEMENT that one of the main functions of SPF
  Community should be to encourage adoption of SPF by large number
  of users and that SPF Community should work with both software
  vendors and ISPs and other companies as much as possible to 
  achieve this goal.

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Question:
  4. Do you believe that for this organization to work it must have
     official legal status (i.e. non-profit corporation)?
    a. Not ever
    b. Not now but maybe in the future
    c. Should start on legally organized body now

Total Number of Responding: 19
  "A" answers:  3 (16%)
  "B" answers: 13 (68%)
  "C" answers:  3 (16%)

Summary:
  There is a ROUGH CONSENSUS that SPF Community should be a self-organized
  group similar to IETF or some open-source projects and should not right
  now become a legally organized civil body but that this option should be
  open for the future and as such the structure of the organization should
  permit creation of non-profit corporation based on it in the future.

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Question:
  5. In case founder of SPF Community (Meng) does not support creating of 
     this organization, should the group of other participants still go 
     ahead with its creation?

Total Responding: 19
  YES answers: 16 (84%)
  NO answers:   3 (16%)

Summary:
  There is a CONSENSUS that self-organization is too important a task not 
  to be taken even Meng does not participate. But based on comments to 
  this question it is clear that everyone wants to try every possible way 
  to have Meng involved in the organization of SPF Community and want to 
  see him continue to lead it in the future.

Note: 
  The question was also asked in the poll if people who answered YES to 
  this question understand that this may mean a split from current SPF 
  group in spf-discuss mail list if Meng does not get involved. Everybody
  answered that they do understand that this maybe a possible consequence
  of self-organization if Meng actively opposes SPF self-organization
  and they accept the consequences.

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Lastly I would like again to thank all of you who have shown an interest
and got involved in this poll. Active participation in democratic process
by many individuals is an important part of Internet self-organization and 
of Open Source movement and people on SPF-discuss mail list have clearly 
shown that they can take active role in such activities and I'm hopeful 
that can ensure the survival of SPF Community as group organized and 
dedicated to improving security of email on the Internet.

---
William Leibzon, Elan Networks:
 mailto: william(_at_)elan(_dot_)net
Anti-Spam and Email Security Research Worksite:
 http://www.elan.net/~william/emailsecurity/