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Re: [ietf-dkim] Straw poll on x=

2006-04-18 16:43:01
Paul Hoffman wrote:

The meaning of x= is completely clear in the -00 and -01 drafts. However, many people on the list, including some of the document authors, have wide disagreement about what x= is supposed to do. Some people say that it is supposed to be when a particular signature is no longer valid;


That's what the draft says. There are many other cases of "invalid". I don't
see why this is a hard concept.

others say that it is when the recipient should not expect to find the signing key available;


That might be a reason to use x= in the first place, but that gets into BCP land, IMO.

others say that it is when the signing system is no longer responsible for the message;


That current draft does not attach any normative semantics to "responsible" so from a semantics standpoint so they all revert back to the base level semantics of having or not having a valid signature: information for the receiver to use
to apply local policy.

others say it is a combination of those. If someone can come up with a consensus statement from the recent list traffic, that's great; I failed.

Instead of clarifying, we need to associate semantics with x=, even if those are "the signer can cause signature expiration for any reason without saying why".

That's what the current draft implies. I don't know why we need a
normative behavior, any more than we need to have a normative behavior
for aging keys. It would be nice to have discussion in a BCP,  but that's
very different than laying down the law in a standard's track draft.

      Mike
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