[mailmaint] Re: Call for adoption: draft-gallagher-email-unobtrusive-signatures-01 (Ends 2025-11-21)

[Bron Gondwana <[e-mail]>]

I support adoption.  Per the discussion in the IETF124 meeting, I propose that the signature cover the data normalised per the `relaxed` algorithm in DKIM, which is slightly different than what I said in the meeting:

*3.4.4 <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc6376#section-3.4.4>.  The "relaxed" Body Canonicalization Algorithm*

   The "relaxed" body canonicalization algorithm MUST apply the
   following steps (a) and (b) in order:

   a.  Reduce whitespace:

       *  Ignore all whitespace at the end of lines.  Implementations
          MUST NOT remove the CRLF at the end of the line.

       *  Reduce all sequences of WSP within a line to a single SP
          character.

   b.  Ignore all empty lines at the end of the message body.  "Empty
       line" is defined in Section 3.4.3 <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc6376#section-3.4.3>.  If the body is non-empty but
       does not end with a CRLF, a CRLF is added.  (For email, this is
       only possible when using extensions to SMTP or non-SMTP transport
       mechanisms.

This allows the DKIM (and what's now called Mail-Version but I will propose to rename to Message-Instance) signatures to continue to allow re-calculating something which passes this signature.  I think it's a worthwhile set of normalisations which allow messages to handle the kind of nonsense which existing email systems apply, while still meaning the same thing to all receivers, and still passing all the relevant signatures.

Bron.

On Fri, Nov 7, 2025, at 11:40, Murray Kucherawy via Datatracker wrote:
> 
> Subject: Call for adoption: draft-gallagher-email-unobtrusive-signatures-01 
> (Ends 2025-11-21)
> 
> This message starts a 2-week Call for Adoption for this document.
> 
> Abstract:
>    This document deals with end-to-end cryptographically signed email.
>    It introduces a novel structure for signed email that is designed to
>    avoid creating any disturbance in legacy email clients.  This
>    "unobtrusive" signature structure removes disincentives for signing
>    email.
> 
> File can be retrieved from:
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-gallagher-email-unobtrusive-signatures/
> 
> Please reply to this message keeping [e-mail] in copy by indicating
> whether you support or not the adoption of this draft as a WG document.
> Comments to motivate your preference are highly appreciated.
> 
> Authors, and WG participants in general, are reminded of the Intellectual
> Property Rights (IPR) disclosure obligations described in BCP 79 [2].
> Appropriate IPR disclosures required for full conformance with the provisions
> of BCP 78 [1] and BCP 79 [2] must be filed, if you are aware of any.
> Sanctions available for application to violators of IETF IPR Policy can be
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> 
> Thank you.
> [1] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/bcp78/
> [2] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/bcp79/
> [3] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc6701/
> 
> 
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--
  Bron Gondwana, CEO, Fastmail Pty Ltd / Fastmail US LLC
  [e-mail]