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/