(This is a long and boring message...delete now)
Perry
The room had plenty of people in it.
consensus between goers versus doers ((c) MTR) is a poor substitute for
agreement by consensus of purpose, need, opportunity, and active
constituency. The formal report will disclose the identities (or mail
addresses anyway) of the meeting.
If you had wished to express problems
with the draft, you had plenty of time to do so before the meeting by
email or at the meeting.
I did very constructively, as did others on the same subject far more
knowledgable than me. This was last time around. I commented that I
could not determine what services I obtained from the draft, and that
such a position lowers the fundamental standard irretrievably.
My same questions are still outstanding, having been unaddressed.
In a more clear manner, Paul expressed the same comment, just recently.
If you have trouble with the document now,
there is still plenty of time for you to express it.
Thankyou Perry. This is what I am doing. Isn't the IETF a great place
for expression. And trouble it is.
We are succeeding to ignore the same old structural problem, that
MIME-PEM and its promoters does/do not aim to achieve the goals of the
WG. Quite to the contrary it seems to seek to undermine, and replace those
goals. This is hidden in the details of the proposal, but manifests
itself in technicalities of identity, distribution, certification, and
(globally) infrastructure expectations.
There is just one question: is there active consensus to go along this
macro path! We know there was no objection at the meeting, from consistent
testimony. Apparently. And of course the recent mails have shown there is a
major
outbreak of consensus on the list...
The question is was the real question or agenda really explained to the
"voters". Legit issues of identity syntax are no substitute for consideration
of the needs of an infrastructure of identity which facilitates
interworking, extensibility, and an incremental migration of existing
sytems to form the global interconnect village. We have seen from
testimony on the mailing list that infact identify syntax does have
behind it a more significant goal for the authors and supporters of
MIME-PEM. Something along the lines of "I hate ISO" and many technical
consequences thereto.
Now the goal of the group (which covers MIME-PEM) is to set the
standard in the privacy enhancement of messages exchanged between
Internet users. I was not aware we had changed the goal to "keep the
riff-raff out by fiddling around with a bit of decent crypto", and
abandon "authenticity and confidentiality of message content."
As formulated currently, MIME-PEM lowers the WG's standards already
acheived in the existing design.
So its a goal issue, Perry, not a technical issue.
I have not read the last 10 messages a deduced the slightest concensus
to change the goals of the WG to accomodate MIME-PEM's goals so
recently and openly expressed. To the contrary, Ive heard an need to
enlarge the application domain of a common authentication
infrastructure, and to enable that single infrastructure to support
multiple certification profiles. Neither of these requires any change
to 822 PEM.
Now back to our desire to integrated MIME-formatted mail content.
It is quite clear from Steve Crocker that the goal of MIME-PEM is to
(now openly) advance the aims of a private ARPA-project, and to address
[PW interpretation] deficiencies of the companies implementations by
lowering the standard in order to make those deficiencies go away.
My view is that neither reason justifies lowering the standard.
Objectives of a US agency manifest in a funded project are irrelevant
to the IETF unless perhaps there was semi-formal collaboration to
achieve mutual goals as with Warwick Ford's personal efforts.
I found the disclosure of this ARPA aims fact a little shocking. it
adds credence to the belief that there are agendas relevant in the last
12 months contributions from the MIME-PEM folk. and that these agendas
are not those the WG is not clearly open to, or was even aware of
explicitely. The agendas are not hidden fortunately - thats not the
style of Steve Crocker, he far too professional. However, they have to
be differentiated from technical analysis when it comes to decision
time. And that is now, clearly.
The goal of PEM should not be changed from one of giving Internet users only
the best privacy services available. This goal should not change. Long live
PGP and its happy users.