From: Chris Newman (Chris.Newman@innosoft.com)
Date: Wed Jul 22 1998 - 12:03:44 CDT
On Wed, 22 Jul 1998, Russ Allbery wrote:
> The entire functionality of that can be duplicated by two headers, and we
> gain backwards compatibility, cleanliness of view,
And you forever prevent Usenet articles from being gatewayed to email.
Unlikely to be popular, especially with those who believe the only
difference between usenet and email should be the transport protocol.
> don't have to use MIME,
Using deployed successful technology such as MIME is a plus, not a minus.
> and don't have to completely rewrite control message parsing just because
I haven't seen a suggestion that you rewrite control message parsing yet.
Besides, the PK code will be 10-100 times the size of the control message
parsing. Control message parsing is trivial by comparison.
> previous working groups who likely had no idea of the issues involved with
> Usenet decided to set down the law on how authentication *must* be done.
If you can make a compelling argument that signing headers provides
superior functionality, then you might get a proposal by the IETF. I have
yet to see anything close to a compelling argument for signing headers,
and plenty of compelling arguments in the other direction.
- Chris