[ietf-dkim] a bit of philosophy on working group productivity andscope

[Dave Crocker]

> >  But first we need to do *anything at all* that is useful.
....
> >  As of today, there is no standardized transit-time message authentication
> >  technique.  If we can produce a standard that permits validating ANY
> >  identity
> >  with a signed message, we will have created a stable base for all sorts
> >  of enhancements.
>
>  Perhaps, but a stable base for future enhancements that will actually have
>  some utility is not, I would think, something useful.

You seem to have missed the "but first" paragraph.


>  Unless the output of this putative group would at least enable a receiver to
>  reject a 'bad' message or have more confidence in a 'good' message there is
>  no incentive for either senders or receivers to deploy.

for some definitions of good messages and bad message.


>  It would seem to me that there is a necessary tie between the identity being
>  signed, some e-mail identity that end uses actually see, and some type of
>  sender policy declaration that would allow receivers to have some idea how
>  to interpret the presence, absence, and validity of signatures.  

Quite a bit of useful filtering is done today that does not require the end-user 
to participate directly and does not involve knowing the sender's "policies" and 
does not require using the rfc2822.from field.






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  Dave Crocker
  Brandenburg InternetWorking
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