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RE: draft-schlitt-spf-00pre2 now available

2004-10-16 09:41:30
Call it "SPF Classic", "Classic SPF", "SPF Stable", "Stable SPF" or "SPF1"!

Will IETF accept 2 competing drafts?

Since SPF is not yet an accepted standard, I don't care if it is still
changing.  But I understand why others do care.  I just want the thing to be
accepted as a standard, and work!

I also would prefer to NOT help M$ in any way.  About 1 month ago, I did not
really care, but now I think they are being deceptive.  And I know they are
evil!  If M$ can, they will control email.  One day you will get an email
like this, but the money part won't be there!

"My name is Bill Gates. I have just written up an e-mail tracing program
that traces everyone to whom this message is forwarded to. I am
experimenting with this and I need your help. Forward this to everyone you
know and if it reaches 1000 people everyone on the list will receive $1000
at my expense. Enjoy."

Not that you would really get such an email, but the tracking part could be
real someday if M$ takes control.

Guy

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-spf-discuss(_at_)v2(_dot_)listbox(_dot_)com
[mailto:owner-spf-discuss(_at_)v2(_dot_)listbox(_dot_)com] On Behalf Of wayne
Sent: Saturday, October 16, 2004 2:48 AM
To: spf-discuss(_at_)v2(_dot_)listbox(_dot_)com
Subject: Re: [spf-discuss] draft-schlitt-spf-00pre2 now available

In <x41xg0ze83(_dot_)fsf_-_(_at_)footbone(_dot_)midwestcs(_dot_)com> wayne 
<wayne(_at_)midwestcs(_dot_)com>
writes:

This "SPF" spec that I have written may be of use to other people, so
I'm publishing a rough draft today.  This is *not* finished, I still
need to go over it with a fine toothed comb and check for things like
spelling errors in the stuff that I have added. I am releasing them
now under the "release early, release often" F/OSS philosophy.  Expect
another release Friday.


Well, I've gotten quite a few comments about errors in this first
draft-schlitt-spf-00pre1 draft, most of which appear to also be in
draft-lentczner-spf-00.

This newest version is still a rough draft, I still have quite a bit
of checking to do to make sure that it conforms with previous SPF
specs (in particular, spf-draft-200406.txt).


Two administrative points before I detail the changes:


First, I would like to apologize to Meng and Mark for leaving their
names in as authors without checking with them first.  I intended to
discuss this in my initial announcement yesterday, but it was late and
I forgot.  Sorry.  As per their requests, I have removed them as
authors and added them into the credits section.


Secondly, I'm not sure what to do about the name "SPF".  While my
documents are *far* more similar to earlier SPF drafts in
functionality (in particular, spf-draft-200406), SPF is whatever Meng
and Mark say it is.  If they say SPF uses XML, then SPF uses XML.

So, should I change the name of this document?  If so, does anyone
have any suggestions?


After announcing the initial draft last night, I received enough
comments to keep me busy editing tonight.  This is why I haven't
finished all the stuff I want to do before I declare the document
final.  I may be able to get another release out this weekend, I'm not
sure.


You can obtain copies of draft-schlitt-spf-00pre2 at:

http://www.midwestcs.com/spf/draft-schlitt-spf-00pre2.html
http://www.midwestcs.com/spf/draft-schlitt-spf-00pre2.txt
http://www.midwestcs.com/spf/draft-schlitt-spf-00pre2.xml


Changes since -pre1:

* Meng and Mark removed as authors.

* More restoration of the semantics of non-existance domains and
  malformed domains from spf-draft-200406.txt.

  * Bad domain references within an SPF record cause check_host() to
    return PermError, not Fail.
  * Bad domain references passed into check_host() cause check_host() to
    return None, not Fail.

  As per all earlier SPF specs, the only thing that causes a Fail
  result is a domain owner saying so.

* Restored the ability of SPF implemenations to provide default
  explanation strings when no exp= modifier is found in the SPF
  record.

* cleaned up inconsistencies in the ABNF code

* cleaned up a several of typos and gramatical errors

* fixed a bunch of xref's that weren't reverse-engineered correctly.

* In order to make the ABNF unambigous with respect to CIDR notations,
  Mark made some perfectly valid domain names unsupported, such as those
  used by RFC2317.  I re-did the ABNF for the domain spec so that
  these domain names would again be supported and yet keep the CIDR
  notiation unambiguous.

  Basically, all domains must end in either a macro variable or a dot
  followed by at least one letter.  The CIDR blocks, if any, starts
  after the end of the domain.  These are effectively checks that
  libspf2 has been doing for about 6 months now and giving warnings if
  domains are found that don't conform.  As a result of this ABNF
  change, things like "a:1.2.3.4" and "a:smpt-out" are now syntax
  errors.

* the 't' macro variable specification was tightened up a bit.

* When a macro string is expanded to more than 255 characters, the
  spec now says to truncate until it is less than *or equal* to 255

* The ABNF and wording for invalid percent escapes has been cleaned
  up, but I'm not sure if I like it.

  Right now, if you say "%a", which is an invalid percent escapement
  (only %-, %_ and %% are allowed), implementations are instructed to
  interpret it as the string "%a" instead of a syntax error.  Domain
  owners are told to never depend on this.  As a result, you have a
  bunch of messy standardization that doesn't really do much of
  anything.

  I would need to double check the actual deployed SPF records, but I
  strongly suspect that we could declare such constructs as syntax
  errors and not invalidate more than a handfull (if any) deployed SPF
  records.  It would certainly clean up the spec a little bit.



Welp, that's all for tonight.


-wayne

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