At 07:05 PM 11/6/97 +0000, Ian Grigg wrote:
Is there any reference material of a non-formal nature that would
support the notion that this WG should use unencumbered crypto for its
MUST algorithms?
The announcement of the new thinking was made at the plenary session at the
last IETF meeting (the one in Munich). Many people on this mailing list
were there. Some even cheered when the announcement was made. :-)
If there is no supporting material at all, and the policy is based on
verbal or emailed conversations, then I would be most uncomfortable.
You are not alone in this!
It
would raise many questions, and given the circumstances of the
competition for mail standards, these are questions that we'd rather the
other standards proponents could not raise.
I'm not sure what you mean here. The rules for OpenPGP are certainly the
same rules as must be followed for all security protocols. This is one of
the motivating factors for the S/MIME v3 work: to be able to produce
something that can get on standards track, which S/MIME v2 probably could
not (because it requires RSA signatures, like PGP 2.6 does).
( I think I know what the answer to this might be: there is no
supporting material and it should be taken up with the Area Director.
OK, I'll start drafting a note. Not knowing the guy and how familiar he
is with the situation, this'll keep me quite for a few days. :-)
He's quite familiar with the situation, and he's also on this mailing list.
--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium