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RE: [ietf-dkim] DKIM BOF -- draft charter and agenda

2005-10-13 08:56:47
I think it is inevitable that we will propose additions. In particular I
think it is inevitable that we will end up specifying a new
canonicalization algorithm. That's why I argued that the original spec
should only have two (because we should not have more than three).

I think the objection is met if we introduce the work 'backwards' in
front of 'incompatible' 

-----Original Message-----
From: ietf-dkim-bounces(_at_)mipassoc(_dot_)org 
[mailto:ietf-dkim-bounces(_at_)mipassoc(_dot_)org] On Behalf Of Stephen 
Farrell
Sent: Thursday, October 13, 2005 10:19 AM
To: ietf-dkim(_at_)mipassoc(_dot_)org
Subject: Re: [ietf-dkim] DKIM BOF -- draft charter and agenda


"The working group recognizes that a significant amount of 
infrastructure and deployed software already compatible with the 
input specifications currently exists.  The working group will 
therefore make every reasonable effort to refrain from 
introducing 
incompatible change."

I like it.


This can open up a political can of worms.

I agree that the can is open, and that we ought impose some 
compatabililty requirement in the charter.

However, I'd quibble with the above (which is btw, *much* 
better than the "minimal" phease), in that I don't believe 
there is a requirement for the dkim standard protocol to be 
backwards compatible on-the-wire with what's deployed today, 
but rather that the dkim standard be such that it's not a 
problem to migrate from today's deployments or perhaps even 
to run them in parallel.
(Questions: Is parallel operation needed? If so, need that 
apply to a single message?)

Concrete example: if the dkim wg decided to move the 
DKIM-signature field as input to hashing from after the body 
to being the first input (e.g. so we could perturb hashing 
with some of our own randomness), then that'd be incompatible 
on-the-wire, but no problem for migration.

Stephen.

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