[ietf-dkim] ISSUE: dkim-overview -- normative statements

[Charles Lindsey]

On Sat, 14 Jul 2007 21:01:34 +0100, Paul Hoffman  
<paul.hoffman at domain-assurance.org> wrote:

> Many thanks to Dave for bringing this up.
>
> At 2:55 PM -0400 7/14/07, Dave Crocker wrote:
>> The overview document states that it is seeking Informational RFC  
>> status. Further, it does not include the usual citation and statement  
>> that normative vocabulary is used to assert normative requirements.
>>
>> Nonetheless, the document has quite a number of apparently normative  
>> statements -- including some in uppercase -- such as:
>> . . .
>>
>> This seems anomalous and raises a line of questions:
>>
>>    If the apparently normative statements are actually trying to be  
>> normative and are reasonable, has the intent of the document changed?
>>
>>    Even though I've written some portion of the language in the  
>> document, I have mixed feelings about this issue.  Some of the  
>> apparently-normative statements I like and some I don't -- and I don't  
>> know which ones I wrote, so that's not the issue.
>>
>>    Beyond being a summary of DKIM, the document also has become  
>> something of a  higher-level "system specification".  As such, some of  
>> the normative language really pertains to the higher-level integration  
>> of DKIM into an operational email service and well could be extremely  
>> useful for guiding design, implementation and deployment of DKIM.  I  
>> think that's a good thing, but I think we need to resolve whether this  
>> document is making architectural, normative specification or whether it  
>> is providing tutorial exemplars.
>>
>
> I think it would be fine to make this a standards-track document with  
> normative language.

I disagree. The purpose of an "Overview" is to give an informal summary of  
the effect, and especially the reasoning and motivation for, a collection  
of standards. So it may well outline what the standards do, and indicate  
the sort of normative provisions they would make (which can include  
indication of whether such provisions are MUST/SHOULD/MAY).

But it should include somewhere wording such as:

      "This document provides an overview of the DKIM collection of related  
standards, indicating how they are intended to work together to produce  
[list of desirable effects]. But this document is not normative itself;  
{RFCxxx], [RFCyyy] and [RFCzzz] should be consulted for the detailed  
normative requirements."

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
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   Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
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