Subject: Yes, and remove more of the alphabet from the PKIX soup (Was: RE: Can we now kill CMMF?)

From: "Flanigan, Bill" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 12:21:44 -0500

Folks,

	1.  I second Al's motion!  

	2.  Now, let's start working on reducing some more of this PKIX
alphabet-soup nonsense.

	3.  Prime candidates would seem to include (for now) CRMF, CMP, and
CMC.  All can/should be rolled into one document.  
	
	4.  Since CMC is essentially a superset of CMMF and CRMF, the latter
two can/should be collapsed into the former.  

	5.  Since CMP and CMC/CMMF/CRMF are essentially supersets of one
another, one can/should be collapsed into the other.  

	6.  Since CMC/CMMF/CRMF is of more recent vintage, and currently
under very active and broad-based discussion, it will likely reflect many
new lessons learned (especially from the real world of registration), and
ipso facto obsolete CMP.

	7.  So why not cut to the chase and collapse CMP into CMC/CMMF/CRMF
now?  

	8.  This will leave us with one, combined, substantially-revised,
updated, integrated, and thoroughly-scrubbed document:  the "new CMC".
One-stop shopping for implementers!  Interoperability nirvana at long last!

	Comments?

Bill

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> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Al Arsenault [SMTP:[email-masked]]
> Sent:	Wednesday, November 18, 1998 7:47 AM
> To:	[email-masked]
> Subject:	Can we now kill CMMF?
> 
	[snip]

> So - I suggest that we now kill the CMMF document, as it serves no useful
> purpose.
> 
	[snip]
> 				Al Arsenault
	[snip]

---

From: "Aram Perez" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 10:34:48 -0800

I like Bill suggestion. Less documentation is better (KISS ;-)

Aram Perez
Apple Computer, Inc.

---

From: Warwick Ford <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 12:49:16 -0800

I think we all want to see the document structure rationalized, but I would
not want that objective to destabilize completion of the protocol specs.  I
see it as follows:  CMP and CRMF are (virtually) Proposed Standards now, and
we do not want to disturb them.  In their next iteration, we could certainly
consider folding CRMF into the CMP spec.  CMC has done the right thing in
eliminating its dependence on CMMC, so we are probably now able to drop CMMC
as Al proposed.  It is OK for CMC to reference CRMF for now; but the CMC
authors might consider folding in CRMF as well at some stage -- maybe a
future iteration, to be sure such a move does not disrupt publication of the
first CMC Proposed Draft.  However, it would not be helpful to try to merge
CMP and CMC at this stage -- this is something we can look at later on, in
the light of experience in implementing these protocols.

Warwick

> From: Aram Perez [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Sent: Friday, December 18, 1998 10:35 AM
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: Yes, and remove more of the alphabet from the PKIX soup
> (Was: RE: Can we now kill CMMF?)
> 
>