Subject: [apps-discuss] Publication request for draft-ietf-appsawg-malformed-mail-08

From: S Moonesamy <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2013 11:38:40 -0700

Hi Barry,

The Appsawg requests publication of 
draft-ietf-appsawg-malformed-mail-08.  The Document Shepherd Write-Up is below.

1. Summary

    The document shepherd is S. Moonesamy.  The Responsible Area Director is
    Barry Leiba.

    draft-ietf-appsawg-malformed-mail-08 provides a collection of the best
    advice available regarding a variety of common malformed mail situations,
    to be used as implementation guidance.  The intended status is
    Informational.

2. Review and Consensus

    The document was discussed by a few participants within the Applications
    Area Working Group and it has the consensus of the working group.

3. Intellectual Property

    There isn't any IPR disclosure referencing this document.  The authors has
    confirmed that the document is in full conformance with BCP 78 and BCP 79.

4. Other points

    The obsolete references to RFC 733 and RFC 1113 are intentional.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy (as document shepherd)

---

From: Barry Leiba <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2013 18:16:41 -0400

>    Area Working Group and it has the consensus of the working group.

Is that really all that makes sense to say about this?  Nothing else
worth noting about the discussion, which the IESG might find useful?

As I remember, there was some significant discussion about whether it
was even a good idea to publish such a document, and a view that doing
so was making some sort of "standardization" of the malformations and
the suggested behaviour.  This was a significant concern, causing some
to object to the document on the whole.  As I recall, the language in
the document reflects that discussion, and that, while some
participants are likely still not happy, the current language has
allayed the concerns at least enough to remove the objections.

That's as I remember, though I'm aging and my beard is ever greyer;
perhaps I'm thinking of another discussion, of another document in a
galaxy farther away?

Barry

---

From: S Moonesamy <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2013 19:04:58 -0700

Hi Barry,
>worth noting about the discussion, which the IESG might find useful?

Sorry about the botched write-up.  I see that I missed the review 
part entirely.

>allayed the concerns at least enough to remove the objections.

Yes.

The initial version of the draft was intended as a BCP and it 
switched to Informational in -02.  What I missed, among other things, 
is that the first discussions about the draft was in 2011.

>perhaps I'm thinking of another discussion, of another document in a

No. :-)

Summary

    The document provides a collection of the best advice available regarding
    a variety of common malformed mail situations, to be used as
    implementation guidance.  The intended status is Informational as the
    document provides guidance instead of setting best current practices.

Review and Consensus

    The document was originally intended as best current practices for handling
    malformed messages.  There was a discussion about doing a registry of
    malformations and their corresponding handling advice rather than updating
    an RFC whenever the list changes.  There was a comment that violations
    of a protocol specification does not qualify as protocol parameters.  It
    was suggested to use a wiki.  The working group decided on having a
    document that provides advice about the safe handling of  malformed
    messages as it did not make sense to have a uniform policy for dealing with
    malformed messages and there was a view that it was in the best interest of
    everyone to document less-harmful avenues to take.

    During the working group discussions it was mentioned that the robustness
    principle has had some controversy over the years because deployed servers
    that accepted non-compliant messages were responsible for widespread
    deployment of broken clients.  This resulted in "standards creep" where
    new servers were forced to accept common but erroneous messages and
    protocol usage, and that made it harder to develop extensions.

    There was a comment about the market exerts strong pressures on receivers
    to accept malformed messages if the receivers can possibly make sense of
    them and it was pointed out that enforcement of RFC 5322 and its
    predecessors tend to cause loss of legitimate messages instead of unwanted
    messages. There were discussions about the related mail-related standards,
    MIME, and about examples of malformed messages.

    There wasn't any noteworthy controversy except for the original intended
    status of the document.  There were reviews from Dave Crocker, John Levine,
    and Alexey Melnikov.  Timo Sirainen reviewed the document from an IMAP
    developer's point of view.  The document has the consensus of the
    working group.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy