At 10:25 AM 10/2/98 -0700, Denis Pinkas wrote:
2. Since there was some discussions on the draft and changes were still
being made, it was not felt desirable that the CMS draft be put at risk by
this change occuring.
During the last meeting in Chicago I raised the issue of some changes needed
into it I recently sent a message on this topic.
Exactly. This is a very good reason not to put these into CMS: we really,
really don't want to hold it up.
I do no like the
idea that you seem to be suggesting that other groups look only at the CMS
draft for their work. They should be looking at the range of work we are
doing. The concepts in ESS are not restricted to S/MIME by any stretch of
the imagnination.
The current title of ESS-08 is "Enhanced Security Services for S/MIME". It is
not "Enhanced Security Services" and I think the current title is
appropriate.
So ESS *is* restricted to S/MIME.
I believe you are being way too literal here. "for S/MIME" does *not* mean
"only for S/MIME". The IETF has a long history of protocol X using parts
(or all) of protocol Y, even when they are in very different areas of the
Internet. Anyone is free to use any part of the ESS draft for any purpose.
That's the way we do things in the IETF.
On the other hand, many people are
considering
using CMS outside the context of S/MIME. They are not going to look at a
document like ESS (that is S/MIME specific).
Why not? If they want to only look at one document, fine, but that's their
problem, not ours. Good protocol designers will look to a variety of
sources for information.
--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium