Pre-picking one solution (Re: [ietf-dkim] Re: WG Review: Domain Keys Identified Mail) (dkim)

[Harald Tveit Alvestrand]

Branching off from the interminable "justifiable changes" thread....

--On onsdag, desember 21, 2005 23:54:56 -0800 Cullen Jennings 
<fluffy at cisco.com> wrote:

> Related to how much the charter pre-supposes the solution, the sentence
> that "Public keys needed to validate the signatures will be stored
> in the responsible identity's DNS hierarchy." seems like a pretty heavy
> constraint on the possible solutions and one that some proposals disagreed
> with.

I think this is part of "divide and conquer" that is generally argued to be 
an useful strategy in the IETF: once we buckle down and start writing 
specs, we're documenting one approach, with one set of advantages and 
disadvantages, and are trying to prove that *this approach* is feasible. We 
did that to (I believe) OSPF, IPNG after the "pick one" round, PKIX (vs 
SPKI), IM when it was split into SIMPLE and the 2 alternatives (with XMPP 
being a late 4th) and so on. Each of these groups could regard the "what 
are the alternatives" question as out of scope.

I think that's a good way to get things out the door in a reasonable 
timeframe; I also think that the IETF at the moment lacks venues for the 
(probably interminable) discussions about what approaches to a problem 
exists and whether there are non-chartered alternatives that are worth 
following up - but I think the approach of chartering a WG to look at one 
and only one approach is a reasonable one.

                 Harald