Eliot Lear wrote:
Please say more because this is not at all clear to me. Why are more
TLAs (or in this case FLAs) there? Also, you've defined another term:
Identity Assessor. Why?
There is real and substantial confusion in the community about these two tag
values. Confusion that affects interoperability. (I tend to use the cliche'
about watches: if you have one, you know what time it is; if you have two, you
are never quite sure.)
I regularly hear someone explain their particular, reasonable and sophisticated
intent behind using one or another of the two values, as if there is some magic
by which the organization running the other side of the DKIM exchange is going
to a) be motivated, and b) be knowledgeable enough, to incorporate that intent
into their use of DKIM. In fact, the other participant has no way of knowing
about that intent, and scaling limits make it impossible to incorporate all the
different intents.
What is missing is the thing that has always been at the core of successful
Internet protocol interoperability: a small, common, core of semantics. The
DKIM community disagrees about which of the two values is that common, core,
semantic output.
Creating distinctive names for the two makes a reference that uses one of them
unambiguous; clarifying the role and relationship of each makes the meaning of
each unambiguous. That's goodness. It's also essential for interoperability.
Finally, I'll add one more comment, and then I'll withdraw. There are a
lot of errata filed for 4741. This is a good indication that it's
probably time for another version, and I would view this as good news
because it demonstrates a lot of work has occurred,
Good point.
So I'll suggest that we considered this proposed Errata as an Errata entry,
first and by itself, and *then* pursue generating a revised dkimbase RFC.
That way we focus on the proposed Errata narrowly, and reach consensus on it,
before expanding the scope to an entirely new RFC.
Tony's suggestion that we pursue Draft status at the same time makes sense to
me. I had forgotten there were all those other errata.
d/
ps. I can't find any documentation that says anything about Errata scope other
than it covers 'errors'. Beyond that legalistic point, the proposed change is,
in fact, quite narrow and it merely fixes the technical ambiguity about the
output that the document says is its primary goal.
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
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