With no mechanism, though, policy questions are moot.
I want to nail down the mechanism. That doesn't mean it's all I want to do,
but it's definitely what I want to do *now*, since any further progress
depends on it.
I certainly agree with you there. My only lingering question, which you are
helping to resolve, is whether it would be better to make reasonably modest
improvements to the basic PEM, taking advantage of the new features provided by
version 3 of X.509 to overcome some of the previous difficulties, or whether it
would be better to fix those elements of PEM/MIME which appear to have some
problems, and try to integrate signatures, encryption, complex object
managment, and the public key infrastructure and eat the whole pig all at once,
as it were.
I am a little concerned that we couldn't get the donkey to move in the
direction we wanted him to go in, so we've decided to try it with an elephant.
Maybe the elephant will be more docile and cooperative -- time will tell. (No
allusion to political parties intended.)
Bob
--------------------------------
Robert R. Jueneman
Staff Scientist
Wireless and Secure Systems Laboratory
GTE Laboratories
40 Sylvan Road
Waltham, MA 02254
Internet: Jueneman(_at_)gte(_dot_)com
FAX: 1-617-466-2603
Voice: 1-617-466-2820