Jim,
I can understand your frustration with the process.
However, I have to agree with Paul that in this season to be jolly,
most people will miss your very strict deadline.
I also agree with Bob and feel that the impact of this new PEM-MIME
standards on vendors who have or were going to incorporate the
classical PEM into their products would be more severe than the
benefits of integrating security into MIME. In other words, even if
the two RFCs co-exist, it would make the vendors think twice before
investing resources to incorporate any form of PEM into their
products. Obviously those who have started will suffer too. But then
the PKCS folks should be happy :-)
I have to disagree with Amanda in stating:
"I think you're mixing policy and mechanism again. MIME/PEM purposefully
decouples key infastructure and policy from representation."
Because I think the same decoupling can be achieved in a bottom-up
deployment of the classical PEM. MIME-PEM is a bottom-up deployment
of PEM but it requires MIME.
I also agree with John that the bottom-up deployment of the public-key
infrastructure appears to be the consensus (I think it is the way to
go), but I also agree with his concern that that is not a replacement
for the top-down model (should one require the kinds of "services"
envisioned by classical PEM.)
Conclusion:
===========
One advantage of MIME-PEM is the flexibility in the name form. But
the question I like to raise is:
Would this really entice people to use PEM more?
And What is the balance between the added users and the vendors
who will not integrate PEM into their products due to the
uncertainty in the future of PEM (demonstrated here) OR due
to the added MIME requirements?
I think we had a good shot at making PEM more widely available by:
Increasing the bottom-up deployment of the public-key
infrastructure.
I feel that this is the way to go for this group.
_______________________________________________________________________
Alireza Bahreman _/_/_/ _/_/
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