[mail-vet-discuss] Draft as of 9/4/2007

[Dave Crocker]

Murray S. Kucherawy wrote:
> I'll send this through to the IETF Secretariat just to make it available 
> for wider commentary later this week unless there are some big 
> showstoppers reported.

Murray,

By "just to make it available for wider commentary", do you mean submit it for 
standards status?  I can't think of what else you might mean.

Particularly for an independent submission, it's important to make sure that 
the political ducks are lined up.  My own view is that the best way to do that is

    a) Be able to demonstrate a broad base of direct support -- is there a 
reasonable extensive history of commentary and revision involving one or more 
open fora with an interesting range of active participants?

    b) Be able to demonstrate a reasonable degree of implementation experience 
and preferably also some use experience, if practical.  That isn't on any 
formal process requirement, but it makes a world of difference when debating 
against the inevitable abstract theory "criticisms" that seem to come from 
assorted well-intentioned, bright, naive folk in positions of some leverage.

    c) I know there's a third item, but i can't think of it at the moment.

My own opinion is that the document is not yet ready for submission to the 
standards process.

It has had a thoroughly legitimate and productive development history.  So 
it's not that I am actually worried about the quality of the work, or spec. 
It's that I think it needs at least one more iteration of review by a somewhat 
broader audience, to gain a critical mass of demonstrable support.  (Unless 
I've missed that it's already been done, and gosh, that just never happens.)

I'm inclined to suggest a "Last Request for Comments Prior to Submission to 
IETF Standards Process" posting to a few lists.  Ones that come to mind are:

    1.  MAAWG tech list

    2.  IETF-822 list

    3.  IETF-DKIM list (likely to an early adopter of the spec, after all)

    4.  A couple of closed, private zooper-zecret anti-spammer lists

    5.  ?

d/

ps. Although the email-arch draft that I've been working on has not actually 
been approved yet, I've been eating my own dogfood with it and feel that the 
resulting iterative and outward-spiraling process of review -- and for that 
matter the improvement to the document -- have seriously benefited from it.
-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net