Re: [ietf-smtp] DSNs

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

--On Saturday, April 25, 2020 14:15 -0700 Ned Freed
<[e-mail]> wrote:

[...]

>> Perhaps this goes to the challenge of a specification's
>> distinguishing its essential core, versus
>> desired-but-not-required enhancements.
> 
> Completely inapplicable in this case, I'm afraid. One of the
> primary goals of
> the NOTARY effort, if not the primary goal, was feature parity
> with X.400.
> And the operational model for X.400 was success receipts as
> the default.
> 
> So the feature had to be part of the core. 
> But thinkgs change. X.400 collapsed - a casualty of even more
> serious
> design errors than success DSNs. Spam became email's biggest
> problem,
> which made NOTIFY=SUCCESS less desirable. Privacy concerns
> also arose that
> weren't even on the radar at the time this work was done.
> 
>> Fail to support all of the core and it's not valid to claim
>> to support the specification.
> 
> It's not a question of support, it's a question of operational
> policy. Every
> implementation of the DSN extension I've seen has no problem
> supporting
> NOTIFY=SUCCESS. THe debate has been over whether or not it's
> legitimate to have
> an operational policy of bouncing messages that ask for it.
> 
> Of course there's also the issue of whether or not the
> extension, eith
> or without NOTIFY=SUCESS, is of sufficient value to enable.
> Some people
> see little value here, and the NOTIFY=SUCCESS situation is
> sufficiently
> bothersome to tip the scale to dropping the extension.
> 
>> The danger of a pick-and-choose free-for-all is that a claim
>> to support a specification provides little useful information.
> 
> Dave, we're talking about having an operational policy of
> restricing the use of
> exactly one feature which made sense when the standard was
> defined but has
> issues today. This is hardly a pick-and-choose free-for-all.

Agreed.   And FWIW, it seems to me that much, if not most, of
this discussion is not about whether a feature can be
implemented, has been implemented, or interoperates but about a
potentially useful (but so far non-existent, at least in the
IETF) document that says "it would be a good idea to enable
feature A if circumstances and considerations X apply and to not
do so if circumstances and conditions Y apply".  Even if either
X or Y exist all the time or are null, that sort of statement
would likely be useful.  And that is a suggestion for an
Applicability Statement, one that I hope someone who cares will
start writing, not a fundamental flaw or error in the Technical
Specifications.

Just my opinion, of course.

    john