[DNSOP] Formal syntax in the Special-Use domain registry (Was: Alternative Special-Use TLD problem statement draft

[Stephane Bortzmeyer <[e-mail]>]

On Wed, Apr 06, 2016 at 09:51:03PM -0300,
 David Conrad <[e-mail]> wrote 
 a message of 58 lines which said:

> > Some people complained that it was difficult enough with RFC 6761
> > (because there is no machine-readable version of the special-use
> > registry)
> 
> Last I looked
> http://www.iana.org/assignments/special-use-domain-names/special-use-domain-names.xml
> was XML and it's machine-readable.

No. Of course, its structure is machine-readable, but not the
contents, specially the rules about how DNS software should handle
this name. If you write a resolver and want to fully support RFC 6761,
you cannot write a script which will produce code (or configuration)
supporting the special rules, from the downloaded IANA registry. The
only solution is to read every RFC pointed by the registry, and then
update your code (or the default configuration).

It is funny that draft-adpkja-dnsop-special-names-problem spends a lot
of time in political rants and seldom mentions this very practical
limit of RFC 6761.

Addressing it (6761-bis?) won't be easy because it means developing a
limited set of possible policies for special-use names.

> Put special use registry be put into the DNS, e.g.,

No, same problem.