Re: [dmarc-ietf] ARC draft questions (speak up!): Experimental Status and Considerations

["Kurt Andersen (b)" <[e-mail]>]

On Fri, Dec 29, 2017 at 12:15 AM, Seth Blank <[e-mail]> wrote:

> I'm beginning a new thread to explicitly address some differences of
> opinion in the working group.
>
> Coming out of IETF99 and surrounding working group conversations (
> https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/dmarc/5_OP8lVi-a3yHMS0hqs1clyLWj4,
> https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/dmarc/4Gu1EErK4iuo9pQnZ-uJ2tKpMDQ,
> https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/dmarc/X-3nVPUQgIy-AGt4tJfkbPZZTjI),
> I was under the impression that working group consensus was that ARC would
> be submitted as an Experimental draft.
>
> I know Kurt has very strong opinions that we NOT proceed as Experimental,
> and I wanted to make sure he got to state his case.
>
> 1) Unless a chair speaks up that consensus is already Experimental, we
> should have the conversation now and nail this down.
>

Citing from https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/minutes-99-dmarc/:

Barry: When ready for WGLC?
> Kurt: New draft tomorrow, hope to be ready for LC in a week.
>   4a. Document status discussion
> Dave Crocker: Suggest experimental for now because the operational issues
> associated with the chain of signing aren't known.  Revisit when ready for
> a BCP.

Kurt: Have enough implementations to make a proposed standard.

Murray: If it's WGLC in a week, I'd prefer experimental.  If we take more
> time, then proposed standard.


<more notes about the discussion omitted here>

Decision: We will continue discussing on the list, and will not hold up
> WGLC for this issue. We need to have a working group decision by the time
> we request publication (after WGLC).


It's quite clear that my assertion of being ready for LC before the end of
July 2017 was a wild flight of fancy; but I'm glad to see that I didn't
entirely invent the interpretation of continuing on a "proposed standard"
path.

While John Levine cited the benefits of the "experimental" approach taken
for EAI (
https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/dmarc/gvUecJuYLT9GIh5zbcZ_U9CgNkw),
I'm also biased by the "let's all just play nice" mess that came from
designating incompatible "versions" of SPF as competing experiments (see
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6686 for the eventual outcome of that six
year long experiment).

I think that any protocol which has not already been widely implemented is,
in some sense, experimental - if you are looking at it from the perspective
of hind-sight, you might have done some things differently/more
efficiently/etc. One might not have called IPv6 "IP"-anything or may have
chosen a longer address space for IPv4 for instance.

I'm willing to go along with the consensus of the group, but wanted to
(re)express my continued opposition to the experimental track for this.

--Kurt