Re: [dnsext] Obsoleting SPF RRTYPE

["John Levine" <[e-mail]>]

>Well, deprecating the SPF RR will certainly teach the DNSEXT/IESG/IETF community a good lesson.  (Seriously?)

This may come as a surprise, but this isn't all about you.  

The spfbis group is cleaning up a protocol that is in use at hundreds
of thousands of mail systems all over the world including most,
probably all, of the largest ones.  For all its warts, SPF works fine
as is, and they have no incentive to change.  Hence the narrow charter
of the group only to clean up the existing spec, not to extend or
change it.

I go to a industry meetings like MAAWG with all of the large mail
operators, and I can assure you that if the IETF were so silly as to
publish an spfbis that demanded a switch to type 99, the large mail
systems would say, wow, that was dumb, I guess we'll be looking for
mail standards somewhere else.

>> Thus, I maintain that we take our licks on this one and just take steps to ensure that nobody follows
>this path again.
>
>And how do you propose that exactly, particularly given the precedent set by SPFBIS?

Provide the tools and processes so that people can use new RRTYPEs in
new designs.  (Insert usual point about provisioning.)

Don't shoot yourself in the foot by demanding that we break one that's
a decade old and likely in wider use than 95% of all of the other IETF
protocols.

R's,
John