Keith makes this point rather succintly. If there is agreement, then I
will stand by my earlier conviction; the goals of the IETF are out of
step with US companies' business needs. As such, we should find a way
to separate the non-business protocol portions of the S/MIME spec from
the US business-needs-centric profiling information.
Cheers,
Steve
----------
From: Keith Moore[SMTP:moore(_at_)cs(_dot_)utk(_dot_)edu]
Sent: Thursday, April 17, 1997 2:57 PM
To: Steve Dusse
Cc: ietf-smime(_at_)imc(_dot_)org; moore(_at_)cs(_dot_)utk(_dot_)edu
Subject: Re: Alternative symmetric algorithm freely available for
IETFS/MIME
(re: RC2 licensing).
If DES is a MUST then US software companies will have a difficult time
exporting S/MIME-compliant products.
That's for US companies to discuss with Uncle Sam. It's not something
that IETF should concern itself with.
IETF should concern itself with the quality of the algorithm --
whether it's believed to be of sufficient strength -- and whether it
is available under fair and nondiscriminatory terms.
US export regs are irrelevant unless they somehow prevent a candidate
algorithm from being made widely available under such terms.
Keith