RR Text format (was Re: Summary: What to do with expired signatures)

[Greg Hudson <[e-mail]>]

On Mon, 2002-02-18 at 12:03, Eric A. Hall wrote:
> > the utility of standardizing the text format here escapes me.
> 
> Two reasons: out-of-band zone replication which contributes towards
> overall stability of the Internet's namespace, and zone directives.

(Zone directives?  I don't get it.)

There is certainly utility in being able to replicate zones out of band
between different nameserver implementations, but is the value
compelling?

Should the IETF try to standardize the format of the aliases file used
by MTAs?  The format of access permissions files used by FTP and HTTP
servers?  The format of mailbox files used by an IMAP server?  All of
these standards would facilitate the distribution of services among
heterogeneous server implementations, as well as the gradual migration
of a distributed service from one implementation to another. 
Nonetheless, we don't try to standardize those formats because it would
be a waste of time.  Implementors don't generally see enough value in
this kind of interoperability to prevent them from making little
improvements to or wholesale reinventions of those data formats.  They
write import tools to help people migrate from other implementations to
their own, and usually leave it at that.



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