Barry Leiba wrote: > > So the questions are whether DKIM base, with the recent update, would > be ready by then, and whether we care to do it. Mike and John, in a > rare display of agreement, have both opined that "no one cares" about > it. There is that thought: the IETF three-stage standards track is > meaningless, and that once something becomes Proposed Standard that's > good enough. >
Having just reviewed yet another document referring to "recent activity by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to create protocol standards around SPF and DKIM", I am reminded how little the community outside IETF grasps the difference between Informational, Experimental, and Standards Track, never mind the differences between Proposed, Draft, and Full Standard. So I agree that, largely, no one cares whether DKIM is PS or DS. I have been seeing significant uptake in DKIM adoption and am concerned that, if we are seen to be making large changes to the specification, we're likely to induce another round of waiting until we're "done" on the part of implementers and adopters. Regardless of how we describe the compatibility between -bis and 4871, it's all about the perception if large changes are being made. I'd like to see us fold in the errata and update, waiting if necessary for the update to meet the age requirement, and take the resulting document to DS. The main reason I advocate that we go to DS is that it constrains the changes, and supports the perception that this is a small change that will not upset current deployment and isn't worth delaying deployment for. Being able to describe the change as "an IETF process thing" can be reassuring to those who might otherwise be worried about technical changes. -Jim _______________________________________________ NOTE WELL: This list operates according to http://mipassoc.org/dkim/ietf-list-rules.html
