[ietf-dkim] 1365, with a question about the "we never send mail"

[Dave Crocker]

Stephen Farrell wrote:
  > Just addressing the potential process thing:
> 
> If the WG don't include this as a requirement, then the thing to do
> would be to write an individual I-D profiling that part of the relevant
> experimental protocol. That I-D, or the RFC resulting from it, would
> then presumably be part of the input were said experimental protocol
> ever to resume on the standards track.
> 
> Having said that, our job for now is to figure out whether to include
> this requirement or not for SSP, and your mail isn't entirely clear as
> to whether you think SSP needs to support that requirement.


The working group is focused on DKIM.  As I understand it, our work on SSP is 
therefore  in support of DKIM.  A flag that says "we never send mail" is not 
specific to DKIM.

SSP is being defined as an extensible mechanism and we are populating it with 
some initial set of DKIM-related flags.  Nothing constrains what flags can be 
added later.

The advantages to producing an independent I-D for a flag that says "we never 
send mail" is that it can use the extensible mechanism, without having to be 
tied to the DKIM working group and without being placed into the critical path 
of initial SSP standardization.

The latter point is made even more significant by the fact that there is an 
existing and deployed mechanism, and therefore there is a reasonable debate to 
have about creating a new one.

All that makes it better to decouple that work.

d/

ps. I'm not offering an opinion about the merits of having this flag, merely 
looking for a way to expedite our core work.

-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net