Even further, why wait till September 30? The patent sunset is sufficiently close and the deployment of RSA sufficiently widespread that the IESG is not likely to influence the situation much. I strongly suspect that MOST implementations of S/MIME will ignore the mandatory support for D-H. The IESG can issue Canute like demands but the tide of deployed clients will not head them any more than the sea did the King. We all know that after Sept 30 the IESG won't have any rational argument for not recognising that support for RSA is necessary for S/MIME interoperability and support for DH is not. It does not take a game theorist to determine that the IESG has no negotiating strength in such a situation. Coupled with the various pieces of mud bubbling to the surface of the swamp with various obscure D-H related claims emerging, the IP story on D-H is likely to be worse than that on RSA after Sept 30. Phill -----Original Message----- From: Frederik Loeckx [mailto:frederik.loeckx@utimaco.be] Sent: Friday, June 23, 2000 7:46 AM To: ietf-pkix@imc.org Subject: Re: Allow RSA mandatory after September 20, 2000 ? Even further, the question could be raised if DSA and Diffie Hellman need to be marked as mandatory if RSA is already marked as mandatory. When RSA is already present as a common algorithm, there is not need for DSA, DH to be mandated. The standards will more reflect the actual marketplace, when DSA and Diffie Hellman are considered as optional. Frederik Denis Pinkas <Denis.Pinkas@bull.net> on 23/06/2000 10:09:14 To: IETF-PXIX <ietf-pkix@imc.org> cc: (bcc: Frederik Loeckx/Utimaco/BE) Subject: Allow RSA mandatory after September 20, 2000 ? Up to now, the IETF WGs and the IESG have mandated the DSA and Diffie-Hellman algorithms only, since the RSA algorithm was patented. On September 20, 2000 the RSA patent will expire, so this allows the IESG to reconsider the issue. I would like the co-chairs to raise this issue to the IESG, so that for any Standard (not Proposed Standard) issued after September 20, 2000, we can, if this is a WG decision, mandate the RSA algorithm. Denis
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