Amanda(_at_)intercon(_dot_)com writes:
I was merely trying to see if we could economize on some of the
mechanisms, and gradually force PEM, RIPEM, PEM/MIME, and eventually
PGP (gasp) to use a consistent (and small) set of common operations.
Our job isn't to force anyone to do anything, remember. We're not an ISO or
IEEE standards committee (we're not, in fact, a standards committee at all,
thank heavens).
Talk about a nasty Freudian slip!! I can't imagine why or how I said "force".
The operative verb, of course, should have been "urge" or "encourage".
The "we" I was referring to was not limited to a particular working group of
the IETF, but rather the much broader community of experts that are working in
the general field of cryptography and data security, but with a focus on
certificate-based security services, which is the community that the pem-dev
list serves (as opposed to sci.crypt, for example).
Out of curiosity, however, why do you feel that we are not, in fact, acting as
a standards committee? Is it because we are not chartered as such by ANSI, ISO,
or the ITU or some other "official" (national or international) standards
organization? EIA, TIA, ASTM, IEEE, and other industry and/or professional
associations create voluntary standards all the time, some of which are then
adopted by ANSI or ISO as "national" or international" standards.
If we are putting a "Request For Comments" on a "standards track" as a
"proposed standard," what else are we doing other than acting as a standards
committee? I must be missing an important piece of IETF politics, or else I'm
just naive.
Bob
Robert R. Jueneman
GTE Laboratories
40 Sylvan Road
Waltham, MA 02254
617/466-2820
Jueneman(_at_)GTE(_dot_)COM