Re: [spfbis] Proposed spf TXT record change

"Murray S. Kucherawy" <superuser@gmail.com> Thu, 11 February 2016 05:02 UTC

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Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2016 21:02:26 -0800
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From: "Murray S. Kucherawy" <superuser@gmail.com>
To: "Roy A. Gilmore" <rag@ragged-software.com>
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Subject: Re: [spfbis] Proposed spf TXT record change
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On Tue, Feb 9, 2016 at 8:12 PM, Roy A. Gilmore <rag@ragged-software.com>
wrote:

> While I'm aware that there are "tens of thousands of mail systems all
> over the world", there are only a few SMTP implementations that are run
> on all those systems. You only have to get the SMTP developers on board.
> This is a trivial change (maybe not a one-liner, but, close), would
> simplify there code and make it more robust. This change could easily
> rolled out as a bug fix. Bug fixes are released all the time, and SHOULD
> be applied ASAP. If a server administrator is still using the same
> version of his/her SMTP implementation next year that he/she is using
> this year, he/she is not doing his/her job and should be fired.
>

In an ideal world, you'd be right.  But in reality, a lot of things don't
get updated until there's pain happening and the only solution is to
update.  After trying only a few domains off the top of my head, I found a
university mail server running an installation of sendmail dating back to
2006, 11 releases back from latest.

If SPF is working fine as-is, there's little impetus for operators to
change it.

You're right that software and RFCs can be modified, but is it worth the
effort to do either?

What's the pain point you're trying to solve that makes this worth doing?

-MSK