Dave Crocker wrote:
IETF should not make it more difficult for the Internet to adapt to
changing conditions by standardizing protocols that only work in a
narrow set of conditions - even when those conditions are reflected
in some providers' current contracts or policies.
Like ARP?
I wasn't around when the ARP decision was made, so I don't know how
widely it was realized at the time that the approach was shortsighted.
we cannot, of course, have perfect foresight, so it will always be
possible to find examples of poor decisions made long ago. however the
lack of perfect foresight doesn't mean we should make our present
decisions blindly.
The problem with the sort of parental generalization you are making
is that a) it presumes that we have better knowledge of future
applicability than we often do,
nope. it only presumes that we sometimes have good knowledge of future
applicability. in the case of SPF we already have plenty of reason to
believe that it harms mail reliability and is unlikely to help spam.
b) it conflates technical competence with architectural purity,
only to people who don't know the meaning of either.
and c) it ignores how easily the IETF can be routed around when it
asserts abstract ideals at the expense of practical utility and clear
market acceptance.
no it doesn't ignore that. it merely assumes that IETF does no good to
embrace a shortsighted or naive technical approach that (due to
political or other conditions) cannot be improved. for IETF to embrace
such ideas both wastes its energy and harms its reputation.
Keith
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