Re: Last Call: draft-irtf-asrg-dnsbl (DNS Blacklists and Whitelists)

[Dave CROCKER <dhc2 at dcrocker.net>]

Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 07, 2008 at 02:18:21PM -0000,
>  John Levine <johnl at iecc.com> wrote 
> > All of these questions have come up before on the various lists
> > where this draft was developed, but I suppose it's worth going
> > through
>
> That's the point of an IETF-Wide Last Call. I'm not a participant in
> the ASRG.


Stephane,

Your view of the role of IETF Last Call does not match my reading of RFC 2418, 
"IETF Working Group Guidelines and Procedure":

   Last-Call is intended as a brief, final check with the
   Internet community, to make sure that no important concerns have been
   missed or misunderstood. The Last-Call should not serve as a more
   general, in-depth review.

You seem to be calling for an in-depth review.

Last Call gives the community a chance to actively put forward concerns, not to 
passively wait and require a detailed exposition by the working group. You note 
that you were not a participant. Yet that is exactly how someone who is 
concerned about the detailed history is supposed to obtain information about the 
detailed process (and affect its outcome.)

Sometimes, specification do contain rationales.  This is one of the things that 
distinguishes IETF specifications from most other standards groups.  But there 
is no requirement for this in IETF documents.  They are specifications, not 
tutorials.


> > Incidentally, although it may still be the conventional wisdom in the
> > IETF that DNSBLs don't work and aren't useful, 
>
> No, it's just experience. The last funny case is inside France Telecom
> (French largest ISP) where one mail server refused another one because
> it was blacklisted :-)

That's a problem with administration and operation, not with specification of 
the format.

d/
--

  Dave Crocker
  Brandenburg InternetWorking
  bbiw.net
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