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Re: [ietf-dkim] Last Call: <draft-ietf-dkim-mailinglists-10.txt> (DKIM And Mailing Lists) to BCP

2011-05-13 16:22:28
On 5/13/11 8:12 PM, Alessandro Vesely wrote:

[...]


    "In such cases where the submission fails that test, the receiver or
     verifier SHOULD discard the message but return an SMTP success code,
     i.e. accept the message but drop it without delivery.  An SMTP
     rejection of such mail instead of the requested discard action
     causes more harm than good."

I would remove the SHOULD as the argument (second sentence) is
clear.  The usage of the SHOULD raises the question about whether
this is a SMTP receiver action and whether it is appropriate to
create a black hole (silent drop of message).
This should have been explained more clearly in RFC 5617.  Perhaps, we
should say that "discardable" means "droppable" in general?

The problem what 'discardable' means has been introduced in RFC5617 and 
I don't think draft-ietf-dkim-mailingslists-10.txt has to 'fix' that 
problem. The meaning of 'discardable' has been discussed on this list at 
least two times (see for example 
http://mipassoc.org/pipermail/ietf-dkim/2008q1/009557.html) and this has 
AFAIK not resulted in one unambiguous conclusion. Furthermore, as it's 
not primarily an MLM issue (but an ADSP issue), I don't think we should 
re-open the discussion again. Don't get me wrong, I agree with you that 
it's important to define what we mean with discardable, but not here, 
not now.

I'd propose to put this item ('writeup a definition of 'discardable') on 
the to-do list of a successor of RFC5617, if there ever will be one. Or 
on another future 'policy' document.

/rolf

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