Re: So here it is one year later...

On Sat, 29 Jan 2005, Alan DeKok wrote:

> Frank Ellermann <[email protected]> wrote:
> > You never allowed this to happen here.  You always pressed for
> > 2822 and the IMHO broken Sender-ID concept, and when that failed
> > you let the A-D close this WG without prior consultation.
> 
>   The chairs asked for consensus from the group.  The consensus was to
> look at 2822 and Sender-Id.

That is not exactly true. Prior to May interim meeting there was general 
consensus that we're going to look and work with RFC2821 identities and
RFC2821 MAIL FROM in particular.

On that meeting it was announced that Meng & Microsoft agreed to merge
into what was essentially CallerID (xml dns record, rfc2822 identities,
pra), but its syntax would be closer to supporting spf with clients
also support spf1 records. It was presented to the group in the way
that left no serious alternative except CSV for checking HELO which 
was also worked by the WG.

There were people on that meeting who did not like the kind of merger
between spf and callerid that was announced but we were willing to at
least try to see what this would turn out into especially since IETF
was willing to put its hand into making it work. Within month however
it became clear that XML was not the way to go (not for DNS TXT record
at the very least) and within another month it was also seen that 
RFC2822 identities is really not the right thing to do per-hop 
authentication of incoming mail server by ip.

Besides that Microsoft intentions and its willingness to work every party
that had interest in MARID was seriously in question and it was seen
that Microsoft and its PRA was more of a burden then help.

So by IETF60 there was really no longer consensus, but parties most
interested in SID were still trying hard to push it through. The
result was not unexpected that when actual poll on consensus (last-call 
on sid documents) was done it fall miserably.

The correct thing to do would have been to re-asses the situation and check 
for consensus again to see if any alternative solution would be have 
consensus to go forward and would not have the same technical problems. 
But it was also from the start felt by many that IETF was under a lot of 
pressure from corporate interests to standardize CallerID/SenderID and 
that MARID was nothing but a show to slightly polish it before putting 
ietf stamp on it and that that abandoning in favor of another alternative 
would be seen as unacceptable to very very large corporate parties who 
would take it as a sign that they should not come and work with IETF again.

So unfortunately, instead of choosing to clearly disregard what was
technically unacceptable proposal that does not have consensus of the 
community,IETF decided to just disband the WG and make decisions about 
the same proposal privately at the level of IESG and select group of
individuals who we don't even know - DEA Directorate had been formed but 
its membership seems to be kept private even though Ted Hardie said here
in message http://www.imc.org/ietf-mxcomp/mail-archive/msg05054.html
that it will be made public. I'm hoping that Ted Hardie and IESG will 
follow through on its promise and that there is no official information
on IETF pages about DEA is just an oversight due to very overworked staff
who had not yet had time to create appropriate information page.

-- 
William Leibzon
Elan Networks
[email protected]