A few folks have asked questions regarding the status of the S/MIME
Working Group and the drafts for S/MIME 3. This message will hopefully
clear up the questions you may have.
The draft charter was sent to Jeff Schiller, the area director for
security, a few weeks ago. He was not able to present it at the last IESG
meeting because he wasn't able to participate in that meeting. He will
bring it up at the meeting coming up next week. If the IESG approves,
we'll be a working group in about a week and a half from now. It seems
likely (but certainly not definite) that they will approve the request,
or that they will ask us to make a change that will be just fine with the
group. If we become a working group, I certainly expect us to meet
face-to-face at the IETF meeting in Washington DC in December.
Because we're at least a week off from becoming a working group, there is
no reason we shouldn't start considering the drafts for S/MIME 3 now.
Russ Housley has already submitted the first draft of the message format
changes to the Internet Drafts editor, so we should see that in a few
days. Blake Ramsdell expects to submit the first draft of the message
format spec this weekend, and I expect to submit the first draft of the
optional security extensions this weekend as well. So, we'll have plenty
to discuss soon.
There is still an ongoing discussion of the S/MIME 2 certs draft that
looks like it might take at least another week, so I think it would be
good if we *didn't* start discussiong the S/MIME 3 certs draft unitl the
S/MIME 2 certs draft was finished.
--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium