[Asrg] On assertions

[John Levine]

I'm sitting here in Dublin thinking about what the ASRG should do, 
particularly the R part, and the word Assertions came to mind.

There seems to be considerable interest in making assertions about the 
mail behavior of domains.  The simplest useful assertion is probably "we 
send no mail", but we've seen at least three different variations on that, 
including SPF -all, the MX 0 . proposal, and attempts to shoehorn it into 
SSP/ADSP.

Keeping in mind that there is no inherent reason to believe any assertions 
that a domain makes about itself, nor is there any reason for a receiver 
to do anything a sender tells it to do, can we say anything interesting 
about what assertions are likely to be useful, and what are the best ways 
to communicate them?  Discuss.

R's,
John