Subject: RE: [ietf-dkim] 1193 considered harmful

From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2006 17:00:23 -0800

> [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Michael Thomas

> Define "needed". If the standard of "needed" is "required to 
> make the protocol viable", then this is not "needed". If 
> "needed" means "anything we feel like changing, we can 
> change", then the words in the charter are meaningless.

Needed means that the value of making the change is justified by the cost of
making the change.

In this case the cost of the change now is much less than the cost will be
in the future. This particular change was proposed multiple times during the
development of DKIM (I was the proposer). Each time the pushback was the
cost of making the change.

I don't think anyone has come close to justifying the title of this post. If
people want to make the case that the proposal is harmful, that is given a
completely unconstrained design choice the current scheme should be chosen
over the proposal then they should make that case, I don't see it.

There is a big cost to introducing backwards incompatible change. This
proposal does not affect any part of DKIM that has not already been affected
and the backwards compatibility lost.

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From: Michael Thomas <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2006 17:39:36 -0800

> cost of making the change.

Really? I don't remember that. In fact, there was no backward
compatibility issues at that time because the DKIM-Signature
header/hashing was different than the DK signature/hashing. As
I remember it, the chosen hash generation was different than both
IIM and DK. And here we are two years later, um, rehashing the
same decision.

		Mike