[ietf-dkim] 1193 considered harmful

[Russ Housley]

Very nice posting.  Thanks.

We now have another example of a message addressing backward 
compatibility in a manner that is in line with the charter, even if 
the end of the message had reached the opposite colclusion.

Russ


At 03:47 PM 3/22/2006, Eric Allman wrote:
>My take is that making gratuitous changes is silly and should be 
>avoided.  Personally, I like "|" as a separator better than ":", but 
>that's pretty gratuitious and I would oppose such a change on principle.
>
>But I'm reminded of the syntax of the sendmail.cf file.  A great 
>many years ago I realized that the syntax sucked and I should fix 
>it, but I didn't in the name of back compatibility (there were 
>perhaps a few hundred servers that would have been affected).  In 
>retrospect that was stupid.
>
>If there weren't other required changes then I might feel 
>differently.  But the SHA-256 change means that both signers and 
>verifiers are going to have to update their software anyway.  This 
>will be just part of that update.  No extra work for the installed base.
>
>If the proposed change weren't at least some improvement then I 
>might feel differently.  But I think it is an improvement.  We can 
>argue how much of one, but that's not the point.
>
>If it was impossible to provide a transition period then I might 
>feel differently.  But it's not impossible, as has been described.
>
>In short, I'm in favor of this change.
>
>Or perhaps I should have just said "me too".
>
>eric
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