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

[Dave CROCKER <[e-mail]>]

On 8/9/2011 10:19 AM, Murray S. Kucherawy wrote:
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: [e-mail] [mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of Alessandro Vesely
>> Sent: Tuesday, August 09, 2011 3:58 AM
>> To: [e-mail]
>> Subject: Re: [apps-discuss] Updating the status of SPF
>>
>> +1, this is a Good Thing to do!
>
> Does that mean you (all) are volunteering to review stuff and comment, and possibly co-chair?


I'll offer to co-chair.

There's some history to this effort, going back to MAAWG, where I was one of 3 
folk raising their hands to pursue this.  Somehow things wandered through a 
circuitous route and I got decoupled from it.

Historically and vocally, I'm not a fan of SPF.  However I am /always/ a fan of 
good documentation for existing practice and I don't believe in using 
documentation processes to exercise religious preference.  An effort to produce 
tight, pragmatic SPF documentation should be accurate and usable.

I offered to assist the effort both to navigate the politics and to press for 
clean workable documentation.

I'll suggest, however, that there is good reason for concern about any 
expectation that this will be a simple and/or easy effort.  It will be wonderful 
for that to happen, but SPF invites the contrary.

A few tidbits as examples:

   *  It uses TXT without an underscore, thereby inviting the classic scaling 
argument against using TXT.  This invites pushback from the DNS folk.

   *  It is based on an implied semantic of SMTP Mail From that correlates with 
actual use, but not formal semantics of the field.  This invites pushback from 
(some) email folk.

   *  It is used for anti-abuse.  This invites pushback from anyone who thinks 
they are an expert in anti-abuse and has any sort of agenda, releant or not, and 
we've already seem plenty of that over the last 7-9 years.

While this probably does need a working group, it most definitely needs a 
collaborative, core design team that shares a coherent and constrained set of 
goals for the effort and that can work together.

d/



-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net