Re: [dnsext] [spfbis] Obsoleting SPF RRTYPE

["Murray S. Kucherawy" <[e-mail]>]

On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 1:54 PM, Doug Barton <[e-mail]> wrote:

> The way forward is simple, spfbis should specify that compliant senders
> MUST publish the SPF record, and compliant receivers MUST query for it
> first. Then down the road at some point we can deprecate TXT for this
> purpose. If that had been done in the beginning we would be celebrating the
> deprecation of the TXT record right about now, instead of having another
> round of contentious arguments about doing it the right way in the first
> place.
>
>
I fail to see how the word "simple" can be legitimately applied here given
the breadth of the deployed base of SPF that's using TXT.  It may be the
right thing to do, but I don't think that's a mountain that's easy to
move.  Certainly it's easy to talk about it though.


>
> Everyone knows the history of how hard it was to get new RRtypes off the
> ground at the time SPF first came into being. A lot of lessons were learned
> from that, and the situation is much better now. Everyone also understands
> that the problem of upgrading 3rd party and/or web-based provisioning
> systems to accommodate new records is still a problem. But that problem
> doesn't get better by ignoring it.
>
> In short, the proponents of SPF (which by the way, I like and use) should
> be focusing on doing the right thing here, instead of the expedient thing.
>

I think that same history gives rise to another way forward.  When SPF came
into being, the RRtype issue prevented the right thing from happening.  It
was made worse by late insertion of a sloppy transition mechanism.  It's
much too late to fix that now, but we can take steps to prevent it from
happening with future protocols. Thus: Take our licks and leave this one
alone, but do good work on improving process and provisioning so that it
can't happen again.

-MSK