Subject: Protocol Action: 'Authentication-Results Registration Update for SPF Results' to Proposed Standard (draft-kucherawy-authres-spf-erratum-02.txt)

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2012 14:29:32 -0800

The IESG has approved the following document:
- 'Authentication-Results Registration Update for SPF Results'
  (draft-kucherawy-authres-spf-erratum-02.txt) as a Proposed Standard

This document has been reviewed in the IETF but is not the product of an
IETF Working Group.

The IESG contact person is Peter Saint-Andre.

A URL of this Internet Draft is:
http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-kucherawy-authres-spf-erratum/

Technical Summary

   This brief document corrects an error in RFC 5451 regarding 
   one Email Authentication Result Name (see RFC Editor Erratum 
   #2617).  Namely, the name "hardfail" is incorrect, and the name
   "fail" is correct (and is used in all existing implementations). 
   As far as can be determined, all implementations of Sender 
   Policy Framework (SPF) use "fail" instead of "hardfail", as 
   specified in Section 2.5.4 of RFC 4408.  The same is true of 
   Sender-ID (see Section 5.3 of RFC 4406).  The error in RFC 
   5451 was not caught during review of that specification.   
   Although in practice the error has not yet caused confusion
   among implementers, it is best to correct the error in order to
   forestall possible interoperability problems.  

Working Group Summary

   This document is not the product of a working group.

Document Quality

   Existing implementations use "fail" (RFC 4406, RFC 4408)
   instead of "hardfail" (RFC 5451), so there are implementations
   of the correction described in this specification.  This document
   simply corrects the error in RFC 5451 and does define any new 
   protocol.

   This correction was discussed on the [email-masked]
   and [email-masked] lists.  Some people thought it might be 
   appropriate to correct the error if and when the SPFBIS WG,
   whereas others thought it would be better to correct this simple
   error without opening up discussion of RFC 5451 more generally
   (and thus possibly delaying the fix).  There was agreement that
   correcting error sooner rather than later would be preferable.

Personnel

   The Document Shepherd / Responsible Area Director is
   Peter Saint-Andre.