I did not participate in the original working group that developed SPF. However I had a number of long phone conversations with one of the folks who was active in the group. A good part of those conversations involved the use of the TXT record. I objected to overloading that RR. In response there was a bit of disparagement of namedroppers folks who joined in the discussions. In the end I was told that TXT worked and that was that.
I did join in the current working group and when the subject of the TXT and SPF records came up I commented that I believed it was inappropriate to overload the TXT record and that the SPF record was the correct way to go and a transition plan should be worked out. It became clear that there was a group that were determined to use the TXT record and get rid of the SPF record. So I didn't see much benefit in pushing my view in the WG.
As the manager of a modestly large network I found the TXT record as a useful tool in management of the network. Such a use was even suggested by other system managers. That was a time when the Internet was a friendlier place. Today I might do things differently and not make some of the TXT records visible on the public Internet. But they would still be useful for internal management.
The discussions in the working group made it clear that there were design problems with SPF. It would have benefited from a well focused problem statement and a related requirements statement. Most of the problems are internal to the framework.
It is a sender policy and there is no corresponding receiver policy framework. There were those who wished to add in things that essentially were a receiver policy.
The design feature that has a wider impact on the Internet is the use of the DNS. The working group was dominated by the internals of the framework and had little concern with broader questions. Internally the TXT record was their choice.
I believe that it is unwise to have a standards track protocol which overloads the TXT record. It is this last call which has a broader look at the proposed standard that is the place to make this judgment.
As far as the current use of the SPF RR is concerned I have the feeling that the members of the working group had a rather optimistic view of the actual use of the sender policy. It is not on the standards track. Having a standards track version should encourage more use of the framework. If the standard said use the SPF record that would increase its use. A transition plan which allowed the current installed base to continue on would allow a standard with out disruption.
It would be a shame to lose all the other work on the framework so, if the current version of the document can't for some reason be changed, it should be published as informational. It should be edited so that it describes the current use of the framework with suggestions for improved opperation.
I do think that the folks who were tasked with leading the working group should be given credit for the job that they did. It was not the easiest working group to deal with. There were time when I feared that it would drop into the disfunctional state as, for example usefor. They avoided that and got the work back on track.
/dan -- Dan Schlitt schlitt@xxxxxxxxxxxx