Subject: Re: Software for PKI

From: Stephen Kent <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2001 13:58:37 -0500

Folks,

IETF working groups produce standards that vendors and users may or 
may not choose to employ. Ultimately, irrespective of whether we 
produce use cases or business cases for the work we do, the 
marketplace will decide if the standards are beneficial and relevant. 
Thus the value of the added documentation burden that Todd suggested 
is not clear. (The inclusion of rationale in standards is often a 
good idea, if it does not make the document too long or too hard to 
read. The PKIX Roadmap document is intended to capture much of the 
rationale and arguments associated with the development of PKIX 
standards. This is more than most WGs do in this respect.)

The IETF imposes certain requirements for advancement of documents in 
the standards process and it is not obvious that the PKIX WG is 
unique in a fashion that requires or motivates deviation from the 
procedures by which the rest of the IETF operates, in this regard.

We make decisions about the potential utility of a proposed work item 
when we adopt the item for the WG, e.g., add it to the charter. This 
decision ultimately rests with the WG chairs, who decide based on WG 
list discussions and based on their experience. I am aware of no 
precedent in the IETF that requires the sort of documentation Todd 
has suggested as a normal part of developing IETF standards, and thus 
I do not envision adopting this proposal as part of the charter for 
PKIX. I submitted the revised PKIX charter to the Security Areas 
directors several weeks ago and when they approve it, it will be 
posted to the IETF web site.

The discussion that has taken place under the subject heading has 
been very wide ranging. Much of the discussion centered on "what's 
wrong with PKI." This discussion often failed to make the critical 
distinction between problems associated with implementations of PKI 
technology, problems with specific PKI models, and problems with PKI 
standards. This WG is not responsible for broken implementations. We 
are not responsible for marketing hype claiming that PKI is a 
panacea. We are not responsible for the ways in which people may 
choose to use PKI technology, which may be a bad fit for their 
businesses. We are responsible for creating standards that are 
technically accurate, comprehensible, and which we believe address 
some non-trivial range of problems associated with reasonable uses of 
PKI technology in the Internet. This is a sufficiently difficult task 
that we are probably well advised to focus on it.

Steve

---

From: Stephen Kent <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2001 15:14:03 -0500

At 1:09 AM +0100 11/14/01, Michael Ströder wrote:
>Stephen Kent wrote:
>>
>>  This WG is not responsible for broken implementations.
>
>I disagree. If a standard is very complicated and features are most
>times optional it's difficult too implement it correctly and
>complete. Therefore the designers of a security standard are IMHO
>indeed somewhat responsible for broken implementations.
>
>Ciao, Michael.

Michale,

You are right that the more complex a standard becomes, the harder it 
is to implement, and thus the more likely to be broken. But, what 
constitutes a necessary level of complexity, to accommodate a range 
of legitimate "requirements" vs. what is "excessive complexity" is a 
matter of judgement.

Steve

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From: Michael Ströder <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2001 01:09:07 +0100

Ciao, Michael.