Re: [dmarc-ietf] IETF Mailing Lists and DMARC

[Ted Lemon <[e-mail]>]

Forgive me if this isn’t as respectful as it could be, but your rather long dissertation on the problem didn’t actually say what would go wrong if we did something about it.   Is there something missing from the summary I wrote and sent to the mailing list yesterday?

This is an operational issue, not a philosophical issue.   People are trying to get work done, and a problem created by people other than them is preventing them from getting work done.  Worse, it’s doing it in a way that is difficult for third parties to detect, and that has resulted in people unexpectedly and unknowingly not getting email they needed to get.

This is a _really serious problem_.   Arguing that we shouldn’t solve it because we have philosophical issues is silly.   It’s like arguing that we shouldn’t have firewalls, which break IP in exactly the way you described, because they are bad on a philosophical level.   They _are_ bad on a philosophical level.   We, the IETF, are not going to stop people from installing them, because they are _good_ on an ops level.   The idea that we shouldn’t solve problems like this regarding email went out the window when Canter and Siegel came on the scene.

That’s just life.   So if you have a technical reason why fixing this problem is a bad idea, please share it.   And I am always interested in your philosophy.   But I do not think you have made a valid technical argument against the IESG addressing this operational problem.