Subject: Schema Straw Poll Closure

From: Warwick Ford <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1998 13:52:32 -0700

Well, thank you all for the enthusiastic balloting and commenting.  Steve
and I have at last managed to synch up, and here is how we interpret the
Straw Poll result.

There was no clear concensus winner in either Option 1 or Option 2.  There
was significant support for both options, at least on the basis of
installed product, plus various positions on technical grounds.  

We clearly need to accommodate the requirements of option 1 supporters by
permitting the population of the cACertificate attribute with self-issued
certificates and certificates issued by another CA to this CA within the
context of a locally defined domain.  In fairness to all, we feel we should
also accommodate the requirement of option 2 supporters to have all
certificates issued by CAs to this CA (which are placed in the subject CA
entry at all), regardless of the definition of domain, populated in the
crossCertificatePair attribute forward element.  

As secondary points, there appears to be consensus that population of the
reverse element is always optional. Text regarding optional, mutual
cross-certification also needs to be finalized but this will hopefully not
be contentious. 

This resolution should allow relying parties to operate under either option
successfully; the main negative in this resolution seems to be that, in
option 1 environments, there would necessarily be some duplication of data
in the directory.

This essentially means a compromise that hopefully all parties can live
with, although we know it will not go down in history as the most brilliant
technical decision of all time.

In the absence of violent objections, we propose that Sharon and Santosh
jointly craft text that follows this resolution, and that we seek to close
debate on this topic ASAP.

Warwick

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Warwick Ford, VeriSign, Inc., Tel (781)2456996 x225; Fax (781)2456006
[email-masked];  301 Edgewater Pl, Suite 210, Wakefield, MA 01880
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