ietf
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: opes and technology picks

2001-06-22 13:20:02
From: Keith Moore <moore(_at_)cs(_dot_)utk(_dot_)edu>
To: "Scott Brim" <sbrim(_at_)cisco(_dot_)com>
cc: Keith Moore <moore(_at_)cs(_dot_)utk(_dot_)edu>, "Michael W. Condry" 
<condry(_at_)intel(_dot_)com>,
   Brian E Carpenter <brian(_at_)HURSLEY(_dot_)IBM(_dot_)COM>,
   Markus Hofmann <hofmann(_at_)bell-labs(_dot_)com>, Eliot Lear 
<lear(_at_)cisco(_dot_)com>,
   ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org, ietf-openproxy(_at_)imc(_dot_)org

...
maybe someone should write up a completely new charter, which actually 
explains in precise, well-defined, technical terms (not marketing speak) 
what kind of protocol the group proposes to write, and how it interacts
with other protocol engines.

As the saying goes, "let's not and say we did".

Have you forgotten the Megaco circus?  The IETF has already played
the "We Disapprove" card, and found that had no good effects nothing
worth mention.

If the OPES group produces something good, then great.  If not, it will
not enhance evil interception proxies.  By standardizing their controls,
it is more likely to make it easier for people to fight them (perhaps
illegally) than to increase their deployment.  The OPES WG can be no
worse than many other current and past IETF W-G's that started "in the
weeds" and went downhill.  To see what I mean, read some of the recently
announced I-D abstracts, or if your stomach feels particularly strong,
the drafts themselves.

When you have a big standards organization like the IETF, groups that work
on bad ideas are very much desirable.  They soak up the attention of
go-ers, salescritters, loons, and career managers.  Otherwise their
compulsions to Contribute To The Standards Process (as they say in ANSI
circles) forces them to waste time of other WG's with arguments that far
more than 4,294,967,296 addresses can be encoded in 32 bits, that if you
have nothing to hide then you have no reason to object to wiretapping,
and that no third party would ever dream of filtering private email with
SMTP interception proxies or inserting ads without permission.

Talk such as this is not cheap.  It harms by wasting time and distracting
from the issues that matter.  Instead of wasting time talking a battle that
is already lost, how about fixing cs.utk.edu to answer EHLO with STARTTLS?


Vernon Schryver    vjs(_at_)rhyolite(_dot_)com



<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>