(This message is not signed to ensure its readability by the broadest
audience.)
About a year ago, however, a faction within the PEM community
apparently grew tired of trying to get people to agree with
them, and ceased most public discussion. Instead, a succession
of Internet drafts have appeared with relatively little
commentary or explanation, and were presented as more or less a
fait accompli. (The fact that they were distributed using a
variation of the MIME standard that was being discussed and
which was incompatible with several products which support MIME
made them even more difficult to read.)
As one of the authors of the documents I feel compelled to respond to
your implication of impropriety with several observations.
o In my almost 6 years of experience with the IETF, it is not uncommon
for a small design group to get together and propose a solution to the
community for review. In fact, this was exactly the process that gave
us the original RFC 1421 version of PEM, the origin of which was the
PSRG (an invitation only group of security experts).
o An internet draft is considered the best mechanism within the IETF for
the distribution of ideas subject to review. The authors have always
(and still do) welcome comments and suggestions on the ideas.
o I apologize for the inconvenience of having sent my messages to
PEM-DEV signed with the new format. However, documents are still
available via the usual mechanism on your favorite internet draft
directory.
Jim