ietf-dkim
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Re: [ietf-dkim] 1193 considered harmful

2006-03-22 14:57:54
Very nice posting.  Thanks.

We now have another example of a message addressing backward compatibility in a manner that is in line with the charter, even if the end of the message had reached the opposite colclusion.

Russ


At 03:47 PM 3/22/2006, Eric Allman wrote:
My take is that making gratuitous changes is silly and should be avoided. Personally, I like "|" as a separator better than ":", but that's pretty gratuitious and I would oppose such a change on principle.

But I'm reminded of the syntax of the sendmail.cf file. A great many years ago I realized that the syntax sucked and I should fix it, but I didn't in the name of back compatibility (there were perhaps a few hundred servers that would have been affected). In retrospect that was stupid.

If there weren't other required changes then I might feel differently. But the SHA-256 change means that both signers and verifiers are going to have to update their software anyway. This will be just part of that update. No extra work for the installed base.

If the proposed change weren't at least some improvement then I might feel differently. But I think it is an improvement. We can argue how much of one, but that's not the point.

If it was impossible to provide a transition period then I might feel differently. But it's not impossible, as has been described.

In short, I'm in favor of this change.

Or perhaps I should have just said "me too".

eric
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