Re: Enough DMARC whinging

[Miles Fidelman <[e-mail]>]

Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
> On Thu, May 1, 2014 at 11:18 AM, Dave Crocker <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
>>> And to the other conversations, we are talking about draft- here. And
>>> that isn't the same as standard. In fact one of the requirements for
>>> being granted standard would be to come up with answers to these
>>> issues.
>> Standards status matters, but not as an absolute.  The fact that the
>> text exists as an I-D also does not automatically impart importance or
>> utility, in terms of industry adopters.
>>
>> Often it does, of course, but this doesn't seem to be one of those
>> cases, does it?
> When people are making arguments of the form 'X is wrong because the
> standard says so' then the fact that it isn't a standard *is* an
> absolute.
>
>
> Even if it was a standard, it wouldn't be scripture and even if it was
> scripture it wouldn't necessarily be true. All these policy proposals
> end up being nonsense because the people writing them always seem to
> think that there is someone out there who can tell people what to do.

Well said.
>
> The only party who gets to decide what DMARC or any other policy
> statement means is the receiver. Everyone else is just offering
> evidence or advice. So p=reject does not and cannot mean 'MUST reject
> messages that don't conform'.  It can however mean 'there is a very
> high probability that these messages are spam'.
>
Or perhaps, more accurately, under some conditions 'there is a very high 
probably that these messages are spam.'

Miles Fidelman

-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra