[ietf-dkim] A proposal for restructuring SSP

[Charles Lindsey]

On Sun, 27 Jan 2008 01:26:27 -0000, Jim Fenton <fenton at cisco.com> wrote:

> Hector Santos wrote:
>>
>> Unless I am missing something,  this new separation and complexity  
>> provide no world wide standardization for general case, widely adopted  
>> expectations by the domain owners.  While is it conceivable the domains  
>> might not care how a receiver reaches a decision, I believe they will  
>> care that the end result is consistently the same across the board, at  
>> least from a standards point of view.
>
> Domain owners have no reason to expect their mail to be handled in any  
> particular way.  They can state what they do, IMO they can state  
> something about how they'd like their mail handled, but  
> expectations...no.

SSP is a mechanism for enabling domain owners to express their  
expectations.

AIUI, the proposed "checker" will interpret those "expectations" in the  
context of the particular message with its particular combination of  
signatures, From addresses, Sender addresses and whatever else, and pass  
its interpretation on to the "adjudicator". Essentially, the description  
of the "checker" in the draft will be just the way of expressing clearly  
the "semantics" of SSP.

What the adjudicator then does is out of scope (our scope is to ensure  
that he is in no doubt about the domain owner's expectations).

I.e. it is perfectly in order for a standard to speciffy the methods  
whereby a horse may be led to water - but no further.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131                       
   Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
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