[ietf-dkim] Re: WG Review: Domain Keys Identified Mail (dkim)

[Dave Crocker]

Ted,

>> We could choose to have every charter repeat every premise for all IETF work.
>> That would be wasteful, at best.
> 
> It's also a principle of good engineering that you don't make unnecessary
> changes to deployed code. 

But since only *some* IETF working groups begin with work that involves
deployed code and since the degree of concern for preserving that
investment varies, it *is* appropriate to have a charter make clear what
choices are made in such a matter.

(and since I have cited this point to you quite a few times, I am not
sure why you are raising it yet-again.)

At any rate, Ted, since you seek to raise a parallel example to
substantiate your proposal, perhaps you could choose one that really is
parallel?


> Note that very similar language was in the XMPP charter
> (http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/OLD/xmpp-charter.html), which had
> a relationship to the deployed jabber code:

That's nice.

Again:  Do you have specific activities that you want the working group
to coordinate with?  If you do, what specific coordinations do you seek?


>> Although not encouraged, non-backwards-compatible changes to the
>> basis specifications will be acceptable if the working group
>> determines that the changes are required to meet the group's
>> technical objectives and the group clearly documents the reasons for
>> making them.
> 
> I personally believe that clarity helped the XMPP working group and.
> the jabber community.

Me too.

But what does that have to do with your request for generic language
calling for generic coordination?


> and some of those earlier efforts (like CMS in detached signature mode) look
> enough like pieces of DKIM that there is question of whether DKIM not using
> them indicates that they do not work, that this message signing is
> a better point solution, that this message signing mechanism would be
> better over all, or none of the above. 

Two reactions:

1. As interesting as such a discussion might be, it has no effect on the
technical work. The choices made were the choices made. The goal is to
make as few new ones as we can, not to spent time reviewing past
choices. If you are calling for considering changing them, then you need 
to state what kinds of changes you are seeking. For that matter, if you 
want to re-visit those choices, then you have had something like 5 
months to do that. Why must the working group be burdened with this 
overhead, since it has no utility for turning out a useful spec.

2. Excellent.  Clearly you have specific questions you want answered and
you want them in the charter.  Please state them.

And, by the way,  I seem to recall that they *were* raised and discussed
in the extended and repeated open-discussion of the charter over the 5
months it has taken to get this far.  What is it about that extended,
prior charter development that you find inadequate?


> Again, I'm not suggesting a change in what DKIM wants to do

Then the draft charter text does not need changing.


-I'm suggesting
> the WG tell the IETF what, if anything, is wrong with the bits the IETF had already
> done. 

Earth to Ted:  THAT'S NOT THE JOB OF THIS WORKING GROUP.

As has been discussed a number of times, the issue is an interesting
topic and well worth exploring.  But it is not appropriate to task this
specification effort with that analysis task. (And by the way, I thought 
this point was settled during the Vancouver IETF.)

d/

-- 

  Dave Crocker
  Brandenburg InternetWorking
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