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Re: [ietf-dkim] MLM and C14N

2011-05-15 21:59:00
Do you know what is being asked?

I think everyone understands what you're asking.  They just disagree,
and so do I.

When all this started, before DKIM came to the IETF, and then again
afterward, we spent a *lot* of time looking at the canonicalization
algorithms -- and they were changed a bit after the work came into the
IETF.  We didn't come by them casually.  Throughout it, there were a
few goals in choosing canonicalization algorithms:

1. We didn't want more than one or two.  This obviously never did nor
never should take precedence over a true need for another one, but the
idea is that the bar needs to be very high for a new one.  The
combinatorics get messy.

2. We wanted to cover the vast majority of the cases, though we knew
there'd always be outlying situations where some mail would get broken
because what we had didn't *quite* cover some other case.  We decided
to accept that.

3. We absolutely did *not* want to go adding new algorithms for this
or that piece of software that was getting something wrong.
Canonicalization algorithms were *not* designed to work around broken
software.  They're meant to deal primarily with legitimate, if
sometimes unfortunate, changes that get made to the mail along the
way, and secondarily with *very common* situations that creep into the
questionable area.

A real live LIST organism (stream) is adding an extra line (two bytes,
<CR><LF>) after the header and before the body probably all its life

It's an outlier, off in the weeds.  This is not a common situation all
around the Internet.  And in any case, the MLM document isn't the
place to define a new algorithm.

This is surreal. Don't shoot the messenger, listen to the message!

There's nothing surreal here, and, again, I ask you to stop being
extreme and inflammatory.  Calm discussion, please.  Anyway, we *are*
listening to the message.  It seems that at least five people have
listened, and responded.  Their response is simply one of
disagreement.  Listening is not the same as agreeing.

Six.  I also disagree.

Barry
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