Re: co-chair judgment of consensus related to last call period of 23-Aug-2004 to 10-Sept-2004

["william(at)elan.net" <william@xxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 11 Sep 2004, Andrew Newton wrote:

> The following is the judgment of the co-chairs relating to consensus 
> within the MARID working group during the last call period of 
> 23-August-2004 through 10-September-2004.
> 
> 1) On the issue of using a DNS name prefix, there is at least rough 
> consensus that no prefix should be used.
I'm not sure there was rought consensus on this. I'll try to calculate 
number of posts for and against and post results, but unless I'm mistaken 
it was equal! I've privately made recomendation to co-chairs on this
issue that it would be appropriate to ask official opinion of dns expert 
(meaning WG tech advisor on dns issues) and in fact co-chairs privately
also agree that it is a good idea; it is unfortunete that they know 
decided the issue on their own without the expert opinion or clear
consensus from the WG.
 
> 2) On the issue of compliance with the use of the TXT record, the 
> working group has at least rough consensus that TXT usage is acceptable 
> for compliance and should not be specified as a configuration that will 
> be non-compliant.  However, there is at least rough consensus that the 
> use of the SPF-specific record type is more desirable than the use of a 
> TXT record type.  It is the opinion of the co-chairs that the -protocol 
> document clearly state that the usage of TXT records will most likely 
> be deprecated by future protocol definition.
Yes, it seems that most opinions expressed were comparable to above.
There does seem rough consensus on this.

> 3) On the issue of ignoring patent claims, the working group has at 
> least rough consensus that the patent claims should not be ignored.  
Actually I have not seen rough consensus that patent claims should not be 
ignored, but I don't think there was consensus that they should be ignored 
either (not until we can read the actual patent), so we're still in limbo.

> Additionally, there is at least rough consensus that the participants 
> of the working group cannot accurately describe the specific claims of 
> the patent application. This stems from the fact that the patent 
> application is not publicly available. Given this, it is the opinion 
> of the co-chairs that MARID should not undertake work on alternate 
> algorithms reasonably thought to be covered by the patent application.  
On this I STRONGLY disagree.  I believe there was in fact consensus that
we should work on alternative to PRA that is not covered by patent. 

I also note that in light of that we do not know what exactly patent said,
nobody can not make a judgement call that any alternative would be covered
by patent. In fact if we do work on alternative and it turns out to be 
covered by patent we'll know it because there would be another IPR 
disclosure as this is in fact appropriate way to describe patent claims.

I'll publicly say that I'll ignore chairs recomendation that we do not 
work on alternatives to PRA because I believe based on opinion expressed
by the large number of members of this WG that PRA would not reach consensus
of this WG to proceed to be a standard unless we provide an alternative that
does not have licensing limitations.

> We do feel that future changes regarding the patent claim or its 
> associated license could significantly change the consensus of the 
> working group, and at such a time it would be appropriate to consider 
> new work of this type.
Actually there was some consensus that changes to the license may lead to 
rough consensus on PRA, so at such time if changes are done we should 
consider it, but NOT the other way around!
 
> 4) On the issue of the ABNF in section 3.4.1 of -protocol and multiple 
> scopes, there is at least rough consensus to allow the syntax and 
> record structure to support multiple scopes.
Yes.
 
> With regard to items 3 and 4 above, it is also the opinion of the 
> co-chairs that any attempt by the MARID working group to define any new 
> scopes other than "mailfrom" and "pra" for the SPF syntax will at this 
> time result in failure to find consensus within the working group.
I do not see how you can make this judgement without actually seeing what 
alternatives are.
 
> The document authors have agreed to producing new drafts intended to 
> meet the chartered work item, and a consensus call on them or the 
> appropriate diffs will be forthcoming.  This work plan does not include 
> scopes outside of "mail from" and "pra", and it is our opinion that no 
> new work items of this type should be considered until MARID has 
> successfully produced a first specification.
I'm going to disagree and work on alternatives, because I believe this WG
will be unable to produce specification on PRA scope in its current form.

-- 
William Leibzon
Elan Networks
william@xxxxxxxx