Re: [spfbis] WGLC: draft-ietf-spfbis-4408bis-14

In message <20130529202145.GA9506@mx1.yitter.info>, Andrew Sullivan writes:
> I'm not sure whether I'm wearing any hat here.  
> 
> On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 12:58:17PM -0700, Douglas Otis wrote:
> > 
> > The WG had little problem deprecating SPF Resource Records, which
> > actually enjoyed greater and growing use.  Clearly, this WG is not
> > vested in preserving DNS.
> > 
> > However, efforts expended in creating a DNS based macro language and
> > associated compilers makes it difficult for those vested in SPF
> > macros to admit failure.  Such reluctance is understandable.
> 
> This analogy is, in my personal opinion, invidious.  
> 
> The reason the WG decided to deprecate the SPF RRTYPE is because RFC
> 4408 has an actual interoperability problem in it.  You may recall
> that SM and I originally ruled that deprecation of the SPF RRTYPE was
> _out_ of scope, on the grounds that it was "used".  Our interpretation
> of "used" was that, if there was any evidence of deployment on the
> network, then the feature was not unused, and therefore it was beyond
> the scope of the WG's charter to deprecate the feature.  I think the
> charter is crystal clear about this matter.  This decision was
> appealed to the AD, who agreed with us (though not about the crystal clarity)
> .
> 
> The only reason we decided that we had to do something with TYPE 99
> was simply that there turned out to be an interoperability problem.
> We had to do something backward-incompatible _no matter what_, so we
> determined at that point that we should deprecate the least-used
> RRTYPE.

And what has been done does NOT fix the perceived interoperability
problem.  There are lots of sites *using* type 99 some of which
don't publish TXT records despite the SHOULD.

The group is expecting those sites to suddenly replace those records
with TXT record.

There is no plan to get from where we are today back to TXT only.

There will forever be confusion about what record to use because
there will forever be a record called SPF which you do not use for
SPF.

Note even we have to use "type 99" to avoid this confusion.

> In order to deprecate macros the same way, we would need some argument
> as to why it would be acceptable to violate our charter in that way.
> Otherwise, since there are some people using macros, they are still
> used so we have to maintain them.
> 
> Best,
> 
> A
> 
> 
> -- 
> Andrew Sullivan
> ajs@anvilwalrusden.com
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-- 
Mark Andrews, ISC
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