Subject: [kitten] Stepping down as Kitten co-chair sometime after London

From: Sam Hartman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 03 Mar 2014 09:27:39 -0500

There's a lot of exciting stuff going on in the GSS-API world.  At a
minimum, I notice Luke Howard's recent credential UI proposal.  MIT and
redhat have been working on similar but not entirely compatible nor
entirely overlapping credentials stuff.  Nicolas Williams has been
proposing a lot of great ideas.  There's the GS2 update.  Microsoft has
been busy too with Windows 8 claims, changes to Negoex and how it's
integrated, moving towards deprecating SPNEGO.

Kitten is not where that work is happening.
We have an interesting challenge to figure out whether the IETF can
serve a role in future GSS-API evolution.  If so, we need to make some
significant changes to make it work.  If not, then the GSS-API community
should find some place to coordinate activities.  Speaking as someone
who is trying to maintain both applications and mechanisms working
across Heimdal, MIT and windows, standardization and coordination has
real value.  I hope the world doesn't become more fragmented.

I'm not the person to help face that challenge.  I'd rather be
remembered as someone who contributed to the community and who stepped
away when they no longer had the energy/alignment to do what is
necessary.  I'd rather be trusted to do a good job if I find myself
returning either to a leadership role in the GSS community or something
else in the standards space.  To me, an important part of asking for
that trust is knowing when you're going to get in the way and standing
aside.

These days, standardization is less my focus than it has been in the
past.  I'm enjoying implementing products and building Painless Security
as a company.  That's fun work, but it's about debugging code, writing
code, building a customer base, and designing products.  It's taking all
my focus.  I also have a fairly well established prospective of GSS-API
and GSS-API standardization.  Perhaps some new viewpoints are required.

For these reasons, I would like to step down as Kitten co-chair shortly
after the London meeting.  It has been a pleasure to work with you all
and I do look forward to working with you both within the GSS-API space
and beyond.

---

From: Nico Williams <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2014 21:33:37 -0600

On Mon, Mar 3, 2014 at 8:27 AM, Sam Hartman <[email-masked]> wrote:
> There's a lot of exciting stuff going on in the GSS-API world.  [...]
>

I'm not sure why the IETF wouldn't be the place to do this work.  The
main problem is that we've learned that it is best for standardization
to follow running code, and then it becomes an afterthought.  I'm
thinking that we do need a better solution.  The IANA GSS namespace
registry is all about having a lower cost method of evolving the
GSS-API.  Perhaps we could do somewhat better than that, at least for
the C bindings.

In any case, your and Shawn's co-chairships have been excellent; your
leadership will be missed.

Thanks!

Nico
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