Re: Enough DMARC whinging

[Miles Fidelman <[e-mail]>]

Dave Crocker wrote:
> On 5/3/2014 4:35 PM, Jim Fenton wrote:
>> On 05/01/2014 11:43 AM, Dave Crocker wrote:
>>> On 5/1/2014 1:36 PM, Jim Fenton wrote:
>>>> I'd like to understand the relationship of RFC 4846, which is
>>>> Informational, with RFC 5792/BCP 92 here. The latter gives IESG 5
>>>> options for review of independent submissions for conflicts with the
>>>> IETF standards process, such as:
>>>>
>>>>     5. The IESG has concluded that this document extends an IETF protocol
>>>>        in a way that requires IETF review and should therefore not be
>>>>        published without IETF review and IESG approval.
>>> Since DMARC does not extend any existing IETF protocol, how is that
>>> reference useful here?
>> I was citing one of the five options IESG has. For brevity I chose not
>> to cite all five (everyone can find them in RFC 5742, not 5792 which was
>> a typo).
>>
>> But since you bring it up, DMARC does alter (extend) SMTP, for example
>> by its recommendation in Section 10.1 that messages containing a single
>> RFC5322.From with multiple entities be rejected. It might be argued
>> that's not a significant limitation, but that's what the IETF review is
>> all about.
>
> This confuses advice about policies for /use/ of a protocol, versus
> /specification/ of the protocol itself.  "Extending" means modifying the
> protocol.  Changing the bits over the wire; changing semantics of the
> bits.  Bits over the wire is the usual IETF definition of 'protocol'.
>
> The SMTP specification makes no attempt to give comprehensive guidance
> about receiver policies for rejecting or accepting mail.  Nor should it.
>
> The DMARC draft does not alter the bits over the wire.
>
> John Levine's example of DMARC defining additional response codes is
> somewhat more interesting, though I'd still class it as pretty minor,
> since its not changing any major reply values.
>
Let's be clear about something - it's not just "bits over the wire" - 
it's side effects as well, notably state machine changes in the protocol 
engines.

Miles Fidelman