Re: Last Call: <draft-ietf-marf-spf-reporting-08.txt> (SPF Authentication Failure Reporting using the Abuse Report Format) to Proposed Standard

[Scott Kitterman <[e-mail]>]

On Thursday, March 01, 2012 07:53:48 AM SM wrote:
...
> At 06:22 01-03-2012, Scott Kitterman wrote:
> >IESG.  It includes SPF specifics (although it doesn't require a normative
> >reference to RFC 4408, so there's no downref issue with it), so I think
> >that in the context of authentication failure reporting this is already
> >established
> >to be in scope.  All the current draft does is provide an optional
> >mechanism
> In the Last Call message issued by the IESG, it is mentioned that:
> 
>    "Note that this document has a downward normative reference: This
> document makes a normative reference to SPF (RFC4408), which is
> Experimental."
> 
> Is the downward normative reference in the draft incorrect?

No.  The downref is correct.  Downrefs are allowed, but have to be reviewed 
(AIUI).  I was saying that I think the downref is safe and appropriate in this 
instance because the parts of RFC 4408 that are relevant to this draft are 
stable and it would be very, very, very unlikely for them to change in SPFbis.

The "no downref issue" was related to draft-ietf-marf-authfailure-report-10, 
not this one.

Scott K