Sender Policy Framework

On Sunday 2006-01-08 at 22:00 UTC, the council held a meeting on IRC. There was a pre-planned agenda. Greg, Julian, Mark, and Wayne were present. Meng was absent.

Wayne's resignation from the council. Julian wanted to discuss Wayne's resignation briefly before the council would formally accept it. He asked Wayne whether there were any specific reasons that had caused him to resign. Wayne answered that his main reason was his lack of motivation to do what needed to be done as a council member, such as organizing this meeting and preparing the agenda for it, and that he had been supposed to write up the council's proposal for the council election procedures but had not done so, for which he apologized. Julian explained that he had suspected that he or someone else might have annoyed Wayne and that perhaps this had been the reason for Wayne's resignation, but Wayne assured that this was not the case. Greg said that even if Wayne chose not to formally resign, there were hardly any upcoming responsibilities that Wayne could not be excused from. Julian expressed his deep regret over Wayne's decision to leave, and he said that he considered Wayne as having been a huge element of the council and the project, to which Wayne replied that he did not intend to leave the project. Mark also commended Wayne for his work for the project and added that he could only respect his decision to resign for his lack of motivation.

Then Greg proposed that Wayne only resign as the chairman and keep his seat in the council until the end of the term. After a short conversation about whether or not it would have been appropriate to bring in a replacement council member for Wayne for the remainder of the term, Julian picked up Greg's idea and asked Wayne what he was thinking of it. Wayne replied that if the others considered it helpful, he could resign from his position of chairman only. Greg and Julian confirmed that they would appreciate that. Julian remarked that he was disappointed that Meng had not shown the council the respect of resigning months before. Finally, Wayne moved that the council consider his resignation to be from the position of chair only, which was promptly accepted by everyone. Julian again thanked Wayne for his work as the chairman.

Selecting a new chair. Julian explained that a new chairman should be selected for the remainder of the term, and, being the secretary himself, that either Mark or Greg should be chosen, or otherwise a new secretary would also have to be selected. He asked Mark whether he would be willing to become the new chairman, and Mark said that he could do it. After it was determined that it was the Executive Director, not the Secretary, who was supposed to act as the Vice Chair in case of the Chair's unavailability, Julian moved to select Mark as the new chairman for the rest of the term. Everyone agreed and Mark accepted the appointment.

Appointing a neutral election officer for the 2006 council elections. Mark said that he had had John Pinkerton in mind for the role of election officer for the 2006 council elections, who had stepped forward to organizing the first council election in November 2004. But he pointed out that Wayne, who before the start of the meeting, in the context of his resignation, had offered to do the job, was now an option, too. Wayne emphasized that he preferred someone else. Julian reported that only John Pinkerton, Nick Nicholas, and Frank Ellermann had been nominated or had volunteered theselves on the spf-discuss mailing list (although Frank did not really volunteer, but Scott Kitterman did). Julian remarked that however the council was not bound to those nominees or volunteers. He went on to report that he had contacted the three of them the day before but had not received any confirmations so far. Wayne pointed out that this was probably due to it being weekend, and Julian admitted that he should have contacted them earlier. Wayne repeated that he could act as election officer if it was required, and then Greg also offered to assume the role, explaining that he did not intend to run for the next council. The others gladly accepted the offer and thanked Greg, who was thereby officially appointed.

The "Thanks for the donated domains" note on the project website. Wayne had proposed to replace the Thanks for the donated domains banner on the project website by a less prominent note at the bottom of just the front page, especially since it had been inappropriately used by search engines as the summary of the website. The others agreed that it was time to make the note less prominent. After a brief debate, it was unanimously decided that the thank-you banner should be toned down at the webmasters' discretion, but that at least a note with links to the donators on the front page had to stay.

The council extends its thanks! In the very end, the council extended its thanks to...

• the council members present, and especially Wayne Schlitt, for enabling the sitting council to conclude its business gracefully,
• Chuck Mead for being with the council for the first half of the term and for acting as the chair during that time,
• Greg Connor for joining the council when Chuck left,
• Meng Weng Wong for attending countless conferences while the other council members were wasting their time with useless meetings ;-)
• Wayne Schlitt for his outstanding work on the SPFv1 specification,
• all the great folks who contributed to the project with commentary, code, and help on the mailing lists!

The meeting was then concluded at 23:15 UTC.