From: Brad Templeton (brad@templetons.com)
Date: Sat Sep 16 2000 - 18:20:29 CDT
On Sat, Sep 16, 2000 at 10:54:02PM +0200, Erland Sommarskog wrote:
> One alternative though, would be to do a quick round on Charles's draft
> to brush it up, and then just let it go as an experimental RFC which
> we can come back to in 18-24 months time. (Which seems to be a
> realistic time frame for getting a new standards-track RFC out.)
Well, the most compelling criticism of my own drafts was that there
wasn't an operating implementation of the code. These drafts
are not better on that score, and more to the point, they never will
be because they describe a system of pretty limited utility. Without
certificates, USENET signature isn't good for much other than what
people are using ad-hoc signatures systems to do now, and they don't
scale.
>
>
> The most striking conclusion of Charles's poll was that so few answered.
> Either very few people follow this list these days, or there was some-
> thing flawed with the poll.
I actually thought signing was the first goal of this group, oddly enough,
and the charter listed it as such from what I recall. But it became
clear after too long that the group would mostly output a polished
turd, minor changes here and there to various minor features, and
nothing really new and useful to change USENET the way it needs to
be changed. My own interest has certainly waned, and I was about as
interested as anybody at the start. Others may have suffered the same
disinterest, for similar or different reasons.