“Suppose you produce something. It could be as short as a poem or as long as a novel. You share with an audience for review. If your audience includes a good critic who knows what he’s doing, he’ll tell you what he thinks: and, suitably humbled, you go back and do a second draft. So those who receive are more critical than those who conceive.
“But sometimes it goes the other way. Sometimes you get fans instead of critics. Then those who conceive are more critical than those who receive. An author may be more diffident than his audience; and he may see flaws in his work where his audiences read only perfection. That’s a funny situation.”
That’s Meng Weng Wong, the father of Sender Policy Framework, (a method for authenticating email senders). In an exclusive interview with Email Battles, Wong discussed the SPF Council, and its dogged adherence to the protocol he originally laid out in 2003. Wong claims that, unlike the SPF Council, he evolved, combining SPF with Microsoft’s Caller ID, to create Sender ID. And he had a lot of supporters: “Negotiations with Microsoft on Sender ID occurred on request of a lot of big players, including Earthlink, Yahoo, AOL and Sendmail.”
Some of Wong’s disciples, however, clung to his older work, and formed the SPF Council to fight Sender ID. Objections to Sender ID include its over-complexity, inaccuracy, and Microsoft’s ownership of the patent.
Wong is incredulous. “SPF is the only answer? At the risk of sounding presumptuous, I have a much better understanding of what it’s like to be Jesus. It’s good to have people who amplify your message, but also important to stay flexible and change as the world changes. I’m concerned that fundamentalists may get in the way of brokering a deal. There are people who would rather die than let the other guy get an inch.”
(The deal is indeed in danger of being undone. The SPF Council has filed a complaint seeking to bar the Sender ID camp from making use of SPF entries in DNS.)
In response to charges that he’s become Microsoft’s puppet, Wong snaps, “I’m interested in solving the problem. The SPF Council was formed in response to decisions I made that some didn’t agree with. But the people who are first to disagree sometimes even have trouble agreeing among themselves. If they’re the voice of the community, I’m happy to step back.”
Anyway, Wong concludes, “I’m glad the big companies have taken up the task because they can take it on.”
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October 5th, 2005 at 9:07 am
Joris Willems
Mr Wong lost he’s possition as neutral problem solver. Now he can never be it again because he join the least trusted camp.
You should have know this before but probably they offered you an awful lot of money.
October 5th, 2005 at 10:16 am
Editor
Not sure who you think is getting paid a lot of money.
Regular readers of Email Battles know that we like all the sender authentication intentions, but think the schemes all fall short. Check the links under “Refs”. You’ll see what we mean. We have counselled email admins to relax till the dust settles since long before the MARID collapse.
On the other hand, if you think Meng Weng Wong is now a blind cheerleader for Microsoft, today’s article may help disabuse you of that notion. If anything, we see Wong as a brilliant idealist who may be a bit too idealistic for his own good. Wong would probably concur.