ietf-smime
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Re: RSA vs. DSA MUST

2000-11-29 17:03:59
I think your perception is slightly (but significantly) off.

Some folks implemented DSA-family, but most folks paid money and licensed RSA
and did that.  Apparently some of those DSA implementors would rather not bear
the continued cost of maintaining a code branch that has seen no customer
demand.  That's a high cost just to be able to claim IETF SMIME compliance.

To be algorithm independant, you make sure you always identify the algorithm,
and don't mistakenly say "encrypted data" without specifying the mechanism. 
During development of the standards, a good way to do that is to make sure
multiple mechanisms are specified. In this case, the theoretical (DSA) and the
practical (RSA).

Peter Gutman said it best a few weeks ago, shortly after RSA expired. 
Something along the lines of "we all pretended to do DSA, but in reality
everyone did RSA."  For political reasons, the IETF bent over backwards to
avoid mandating patented technology.

Personally, I favor products that support LOTS of interoperability modes.

That's nonsensical.  Do you prefer BER over DER? :)

The marketplace has decided and the common crypto mechanism is RSA, and
practically nobody cares about DSA.  Certainly, making DSA not MUST will not
hurt the DSA-using community.

It's not the IETF's job to raise the bar.  It's the IETF's job to make sure we
all speak the same language, and clearly that language is mod-exp.
        /r$

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