Dear colleagues, On Wed, Aug 08, 2007 at 03:25:58PM -0400, Dean Anderson wrote: > On Tue, 7 Aug 2007, Andrew Sullivan wrote: > > Dean, do you solicit my feedback as to what > > changes would be necessary to obtain my (individual) support? If so, > > I will send those remarks. > > </hat> > > Yes, thanks.
Here are my remarks, as requested. Before beginning, I want to emphasise that these are my personal views on the draft in question: I do not make these remarks as editor of any document, including the current working group reverse mapping draft. The question is what would be necessary for me to support adopting draft-anderson-reverse-dns-status-00 as a Working Group document. I do not support doing so at present, for several reasons. First, the WG has already a work item on the topic of reverse mappings, and has a candidate draft to deal with the topic. Since the WG has spent a fair amount of time on that document, all the editorial work that it has undergone would be wasted, and would have to be re-done on the -anderson- draft. That seems like a waste of the investment we've made. It is up to others, I emphasize, to judge whether the current WG draft reflects the views of the WG; I am not willing to speculate on that topic in this mail or other mails in this thread. My argument here is not that one text is better than another; but that, all things considered, the more mature text is the one to be preferred for WG effort, assuming we are going to adopt any text on a given topic. Supposing there were no existing WG draft, however, there are some additional matters in the -anderson- draft that would need to be addressed before I could contemplate offering support for it. To begin with, the language is strangely charged in a number of cases. For example, there is this passage from section 1: Facts have been obscured by advocacy and false assumptions. Consequently, myths have developed regarding the notion of proper use of reverse DNS records, and what reverse mapping information reasonably means outside of the organization providing the data. There are also several places in the document where a statement is introduced by "Myth:" or "Fact:". The style makes for an arresting initial effect, but I'm not convinced that the message is any clearer for it. It also seems to manufacture controversy where none exists: some of the "Myths" are propositions that I've never heard anyone assert. In such cases, at least more evidence is needed. Generally speaking, I think the document would need to be much more neutral in its treatment of the topic than it currently is in order to be a draft of the Working Group. In the same way, I think there is altogether too much damn-the-torpedos certainty in the document. The text, on my reading, describes issues in black and white where, in my view, there are many shades of gray. For instance, we have this: Fact: There is no justification for this conclusion. When pressed for a reason, advocates say that one is entitled to make decisions without justification because they have "incomplete information". There is nothing about imcomplete information that justifies irrational or capricous decision making. Every scientific experiment and every court case involves conclusions and decisions based on incomplete information. There are legitimate methods of making decisions with incomplete information. No scientific or judicial method involves an entitlement to act irrationally or capriciously. Legitimate methods do not depend on false assumptions, particularly those with security and trust implications. Bombastic assertions about scientific and judicial reasoning do not an argument make. Repeating that a course of action is irrational doesn't prove that it is. Reasonable and competent experts in the field sometimes have differences of opinion about this topic; there is nothing wrong with that, but the current text is too busy grinding axes to note as much -- or even that there is an RFC recommending that matching forward and reverse DNS data be used for qualifying email for acceptance. Moreover, the analogy doesn't even hold up: the histories of both science and jurisprudence are filled with irrational and capricious decision making. For example, we now know that Kepler faked his data, that Wegener was laughed at and derided by his geologist colleagues, and that the Scott v Sanford decision of the US Supreme Court was not a masterwork of balance and care. On similar ground, I think that the RFC 2119 words should be taken out of the document. Even if you think that such words belong in BCPs -- and I'm not convinced -- it's unclear that they belong in a document on this topic, where there are so many areas of disagreement among competent operators. It is also not plain to me exactly what the document is about: is it about the reverse mapping feature of DNS, or about how to achieve an end similar to what reverse mapping was intended to do? I believe all the discussion of RFC1788 should be removed, because it's distracting in the context. Alternatively, the whole document should be rewritten as "ICMP Domain Name Messages Considered Beneficial", and turned into an argument for that protocol. Each of these would, to me, be individually a reason not to adopt the document as a WG draft without assurances that the issue would be repaired. Together, I think they make the document in its current form a poor candidate for adoption. Best regards, Andrew -- Andrew Sullivan 204-4141 Yonge Street Afilias Canada Toronto, Ontario Canada <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> M2P 2A8 jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED] +1 416 646 3304 x4110 _______________________________________________ DNSOP mailing list DNSOP@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/dnsop
