[ietf-dkim] Proposed documentation split between DKIM and "DOSETA"

[Charles Lindsey]

On Thu, 13 Jan 2011 12:50:45 -0000, Eliot Lear <lear at cisco.com> wrote:

> While perhaps this is an entertaining idea (I was particularly
> entertained since it seems to take my notion of generalization far
> beyond where I might have taken it), absent an application I have a
> difficult time supporting it.  And even if you had an application, I
> would be initially disinclined to go this far, simply because
> generalization comes with the cost a loss of specific optimization and
> often some amount of (sometimes substantial) overhead.  Further, we
> don't really get a good view of what to generalize without substantial
> operational experience with disparate use cases.

I am glad you find it entertaining. But it was not intended to be so.

You seem to imagine that DKIM is some brand new technology, unlike  
anything that has ever gone before.

It is not. Similar header signing mechanism have been in use within  
Netnews for the past 15 years or more, both for authenticating control  
messages, and for authenticating articles posted by moderators.

So we already have three header-signing protocols in current use - hence  
this proposal to discourage even more ways of doing the same thing.

The problem with the two existing Netnews protocols is that they are (a)  
different and (b) inflexible. Whether they would be changed to be DOSETA  
based at this late stage is doubtful, but certainly possible. But for sure  
they would need different key management protocols, because the signatures  
would NOT be on behalf of a domain.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131                       
   Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Email: chl at clerew.man.ac.uk      Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
PGP: 2C15F1A9      Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5