what's going on

Apparently, taking a couple of days off from e-mail can be pretty risky.  My
apologies for the confusion that has arisen.

On the whole, we're all talking about the same thing.  Our goal is to reach
a consensus on a protocol that fulfills the goals outlined in the draft
charter. When trying to nail down a protocol, some off-list discussions
among document authors or potential document authors can be useful in
resolving some details.  Some of those discussions inadvertently spilled
into other arenas, causing many of us to be unsure of what was going on.

Because the working group has an aggressive proposed schedule, and because
some of the details to be resolved were minor and required some initial
agreement, several people were trying to get some of those details nailed
down quickly.  That's all.

The working group has not been constituted to rubber-stamp anything. On the
other hand, there is great value in standardizing existing practice rather
than trying to invent something from whole cloth.  The goal of the working
group is to agree on a transport layer security protocol as discussed in the
charter.  The important thing is that the working group comes to that
consensus, and that everyone with an interest has an opportunity to
contribute to that process.   Document authors often need to have side
conversations to work out details, and that's part of the usual process.

Now that lots of documents are floating around, however, we (as a group)
need to decide how to focus attention.  I'll check with authors of the
various documents and make a proposal in a couple of days so we aren't too
diverted by different-but-similar documents.

Finally, there were a few questions about details of the protocol we might
come up with, but I got a general sense that the the last draft charter was
acceptable to the group.  If there are no objections to the charter as is in
the next couple of days, I'll forward it to Jeff Schiller so we can formally
create the working group.

Thanks for your attention.

        - Win Treese

Received on Tuesday, 23 April 1996 11:01:19 UTC