Subject: Why is Inhibit Any Policy a mandatory extension to support for the client?

From: "Trevor Freeman" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 17:03:26 -0800

Certificate policies is a mandatory to support extension for the client,
but policy mapping is optional, therefore the minimal conformant client
with son of 2459 can only support CA hierarchies with homogeneous
certificate issuance policies and practices. This client does not
support policy mapping therefore can only operate in a controlled
issuance policy environment. We are expecting the need to use the
inhibit any policy extension in such an environment? 
This does not seem consistent. 
If the CAs are operating to a homogeneous set of issuance policies, you
can legislate in said policies,  whether a CA can have the all policy
OID or not rather than require the client to support such an extension. 
Why do we need to mandate support for this extension, in our profile for
such an environment?

Trevor Freeman
Program Manager
Phone: (425) 936-8477
Pager: 800-759-8352, id#1631457 
Pager email: [email-masked]