Re: [apps-discuss] Updating the status of SPF

[Andrew Sullivan <[e-mail]>]

On Fri, Aug 12, 2011 at 11:38:57AM -0400, Scott Kitterman wrote:

> My view is that the experiment was largely successful and only minor changes 
> based on this experience are necessary.

This is the problem I'm focussed on, however: once you say, "My
changes are minor, $someone's are not in scope," you basically open up
the protocol by having to debate the values of "my" and "minor" (and,
too often I find, "changes").

I really don't have a dog in this race: I don't care about SPF, and
the TXT battle was lost a long time ago.  I'm just saying that, if the
goal really is supposed to be, "Just document what's happened," you
don't need a WG and you don't need to move tracks.  You need a
document that outlines what happened, period.  That will more readily
achieve the goal of documenting actual existing practice and getting
the document out in a reasonable time frame.  Everything else
effectively means that you have to deal with all the issues Dave
Crocker correctly identified.

At the same time, I am strongly opposed, on process grounds, to a WG
whose task it is to move a protocol from the experimental track to the
standards track without facing any of the questions about whether the
experiment worked, the extent of that working, and the trade-offs that
might have been acceptable in an experiment but that are not
acceptable for anything we might call a standard.  If there is to be
any distinction at all between these tracks, then those questions must
be acceptable when changing.  Otherwise, we get an experimental track
that is just a new level in the 3 (soon to be (3-n)) level standards
track we already have.

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[e-mail]