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Re: going back to stone axes
"FreedmanJ" writes:
> >In any case, I want to make something very clear before we continue
> >down this rathole much further. This group does *not* exist to simply
> >be another rubber stamp for the X.509 protocol, and there certainly
> >does not seem to be consensus thus far for any sort of specification
> >language for our formats, let alone ASN.1. Given this, I'd say that
> >there is a limit to how much use rehashing old debates about
> >ASN.1. Its lots of fun, of course, because all of us have stock
> >arguments we've been using for years and thus it allows us to avoid
> >having to think about what it is that we really want to design, but
> >other than making procrastination easy it probably isn't productive.
>
>
> I think its a little early to engage in ranting
[...]
> Emotional,ex cathedra statements such as the above are not helpful.
I was attempting to note what our charter was. I hope no one perceived
this to be a rant. I believe it was quite calm. However, I must
emphasize that our charter is not to pursue the same work as PKIX but
instead to explore new avenues. The current discussion is of limited
utility in this regard.
> BTAIM I don't think I am alone in thinking that some sort of
> specification language and standardized encoding rules would be nice
> as opposed to an ad hoc encoding everytime something new comes up. I
> also don't think I am alone in speculating that ASN1 is (or could be
> ) such a language. It has problems and before we jettison it it
> would be nice to figure out what the problems are/were.
I have no objections to such discussion in the abstract, but again, we
are not here to re-create X.509 identical in every respect. That would
be a waste of time. The PKIX working group is doing an excellent job
of exploring X.509 issues and there is no point in our duplicating
their work.
Perry
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