Dave Crocker wrote:
Michael Thomas wrote:
Hi,
One of the things I noticed from recent discussions is that we need to
have clarity in SSP on what, exactly, qualifies as a valid signature for
"I sign everything".
Michael,
To carry your point farther than I suspect you intend:
From the virtually all of the SSP discussions, including recent
exchanges, I keep thinking that we are starting with mechanism and
only secondarily worrying about utility. Hence the grou confusion
that is persistent.
Some folks think of SSP as being for unsigned mail. Some folks think
of SSP to facilitate end-user interpretation. Some folks think...
And so on.
What we do not seem to have is anything that looks like a clear
consensus about what problem is being solved and why it will be useful
to solve it.
Until the group settles on specific benefits to be obtained, for which
there is a solid basis to think recipient operators will find them
useful, we are chasing our collective tail.
I suggest that discussion about technology -- that is, mechanisms --
should be deferred until the receive-side benefits (and, for that
matter, the receive-side consuming component) are established.
Dave --
I view this exercise as a largely unproductive rathole. I think there's
been a consensus
for quite a while that the information provided would be interesting to
a pretty widely
varying set of people. Like dkim-base, I don't think we need to
enumerate with any
precision what those benefits are as will undoubtably fall into the
false dilemma of
trying to rank them, categorize them, etc. I can't see how that is
helpful because it's
very clear that that way consensus does not lie. Nor need it, IMO.
On the sender/signer side there is a fairly simple benefit: SSP is an
information
service which domains publish to give receivers more accurate details
for their
delivery decisions. Nothing more. I think that's pretty much all of the
justification
we need.
Much more interesting in my mind is whether there's potential *harm* that
might come from SSP, and if so whether the draft can do anything to
avoid that
harm, how likely the harm would be, etc.
Mike
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