Change the status of DKIM (RFC 6376) to Internet Standard
status-change-dkim-to-internetstandard-03

The following approval message was sent
From: The IESG
To: IETF-Announce
Cc: RFC Editor , ietf-dkim@mipassoc.org, dcrocker@bbiw.net, superuser@gmail.com
Subject: Protocol Action: DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) Signatures to Internet Standard

The IESG has approved changing the status of the following document:
- DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) Signatures
  (rfc6376) to Internet Standard

This protocol action is documented at:
http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/status-change-dkim-to-internetstandard/

A URL of the affected document is:
http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc6376/

Status Change Details:

Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM, RFC 6376) currently has an IETF
standards status of Draft Standard, which is now an obsolete status.
This note requests reclassifying it to Internet Standard.

  (1) There are at least two independent interoperating implementations
      with widespread deployment and successful operational experience.

DKIM is in large-scale production use around the Internet, and there are
many independent implementations of DKIM.  See http://dkim.org/deploy/

  (2) There are no errata against the specification that would cause a
      new implementation to fail to interoperate with deployed ones.

There is only one, non-substantive erratum against an example in the
DKIM specification: http://www.rfc-editor.org/errata_search.php?rfc=6376

  (3) There are no unused features in the specification that greatly
      increase implementation complexity.

The -bis effort that produced RFC 6376 at Draft Standard refined the
document against implementation and deployment experience, and
eliminated unused features.

  (4) If the technology required to implement the specification
      requires patented or otherwise controlled technology, then the
      set of implementations must demonstrate at least two independent,
      separate and successful uses of the licensing process.

The Yahoo! IPR declaration does not require users of the technology to
pursue special procedures, such as licensing:
http://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/693/


Personnel

  Barry Leiba is the responsible Area Director.

[Ballot comment]
I find neither of the two negative comments during IETF Last Call at all convincing:

- The claim that other technologies, specifically SPF, mean that DKIM will be replaced is to misunderstand that SPF and DKIM address two very different issues.

- I have thoroughly reviewed the draft enumerating DKIM's "harms". At core, this draft is a complaint that DKIM does not solve the problem that the authors of that draft want solved. For DKIM's designed purpose, there is no evidence presented in the draft (and I know of none that exists) to indicate that DKIM is causing the harms outlined.

I see no reason not to advance DKIM.

[Ballot comment]

As a former co-chair of the DKIM wg, but never having been a
real axe-grinder, I think this transition is entirely fine and is a good
plan if we believe in standards-track progression.

And BTW, DKIM deployment got as far as tcd.ie - that really does
mean that this signing mechanism has become near universal. I'm
not at all clear that the corresponding verification mechanism is
as widely deplloyed, but that's ok.

The following Last Call message was sent manually:

From: The IESG
Date: May 3, 2013 9:21:19 AM PDT
To: IETF Announcement List
Cc: ietf-dkim@mipassoc.org
Subject: Last Call: Change the status of DKIM (RFC 6376) to Internet Standard

The IESG has received a request from an individual participant to change the
status of DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) Signatures (RFC 6376) to
Internet Standard, from the now-obsolete status of Draft Standard, according
to RFC 6410, Section 2.3, bullet 1. The supporting documentation for the
request can be found here:

http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/status-change-dkim-to-internetstandard/

The IESG plans to make a decision in the next few weeks, and solicits
final comments on this action. Please send substantive comments to the
ietf@ietf.org mailing list by 2013-05-31. Exceptionally, comments may be
sent to iesg@ietf.org instead. In either case, please retain the
beginning of the Subject line to allow automated sorting.

RFC 6376 can be obtained via
http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc6376/

IESG discussion of this request can be tracked via
http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/status-change-dkim-to-internetstandard/ballot/