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[spf-discuss] "In other words, it's fairly easy to get SPF wrong. "

2005-12-29 15:32:33
Frank Ellermann wrote (in part):

In other words, it's fairly easy to get SPF wrong. 


I have chided this list a few times, saying that the greatest need
regarding SPF, for a long time, has been good nuts and bolts
documentation.  Now a regular, long time list member has essentially
admitted the same thing.

Responses to my earlier suggestions have largely been quite arrogant,
along the line of:  If people are too stupid to figure this out for
themselves, then we are not going to dirty our dainty little fingers by
writing some decent documentation, FAQs, etc.

Swallow a dose of humility and an even bigger dose of reality.  The
current state of SPF documentation Sucks.  Microsoft does a better job,
at least on products they actually want people to use.  (Not that I
think MS documentation is always so great.)

If Frank Ellerman thinks it is easy to get SPF wrong, then how about all
those sysadmins out there that have never heard of SPF, are trying to
get done the load of work their bosses expect and would like to do
something to help with the email spoofing mess?  How much time do they
practically have to try to learn SPF by gleaning scattered and
conflicting bits and pieces from all over the internet?

Quit worrying about who is going to chair what subcommittee, who is
crawling into which bed with Microsoft, what nonsense the FTC has
printed to justify their own existance and get busy writing.

Essentially, SPF is an open source initiative.  The only significant
weapon open source really has over commercial and govenmental interests,
is the possibility of being lighter on their feet, of getting things
done faster, of becoming the defacto (and perhaps dejure) standard
before the elephants get their feet unstuck from the mud.   SPF started
out this way.  The extreme argumentation phase that went on during the
summer and fall of 2004 really bogged things down, and SPF, as a
movement, has not recovered yet, over a year later.  It wasn't MS that
bogged SPF down, it was the willingness of too many SPF supporters to
let themselves be dragged into fruitless arguments.  That sapped the
momentum.  If you want to get momentum again, you have to get going on
making SPF really available to the people that need to implement it.
You are behind the curve now.

Mark Holm
mdholm(_at_)telerama(_dot_)com

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