Subject: Re: [spfbis] Goals of this discussion (was: A proposed reorganization)

From: Arthur Thisell <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2012 04:25:18 -0700 (PDT)

>    What I meant by that is that the IESG will properly look at RFC4408
> as an Individual submission which received essentially zero review;

What color is the sky in your world?

RFC 4408 got vastly more review that the vast majority of proposed standards.  If DKIM had gotten as much review as SPF, it would never have made it to an RFC.  Both the use of the underscore domain and the DNS tree walking were considered killers for SPF.

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2012 08:58:29 -0400

Dear colleagues,

I'm hanging this on Arthur's mail because it's a convenient example
this morning, but this is a general remark to everyone.

> What color is the sky in your world?

In the event you feel compelled to make a snide remark in your
response to someone, I strongly suggest you save the draft, go have a
cup of whatever relaxes you, and then re-read your draft before
sending it.  How would you react if you received such a message?  If
the answer is "badly", perhaps you can find another way to make the
same point.  This issue is charged enough on its own without people
speaking insultingly to one another.

> RFC 4408 got vastly more review that the vast majority of proposed
> standards.  If DKIM had gotten as much review as SPF, it would never
> have made it to an RFC.  Both the use of the underscore domain and
> the DNS tree walking were considered killers for SPF.

The analogies with DKIM on this list seem almost never to be doing any
real work.  Arguments from analogy always depend critically on an
agreement about ways in which the analogue and the primary subject are
similar.  Since the very fact of the matter about what happened with
DKIM is going to be hard to establish, these analogies are either
doomed to failure (because we don't agree on the similarities), or
else they are question-begging (because they are assuming the relevant
difference, and then using the difference in a reductio argument to
show that SPF should be treated some way.  I knew that philosophy
degree would come in handy some day). 

Please stop with the DKIM-based arguments.  They do nothing to advance
any useful argument about SPFBIS and they're a distraction to the work.

Thanks,

A (as moderator)

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]