Subject: Re: R: I: R: RFC3280: doubt on the use of UTF8String in encoding RDNs

From: Stephen Kent <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 May 2004 16:36:24 -0400

At 9:54 AM +0200 4/23/04, Santoni Adriano wrote:
>A rule that is "at odds with reality" should not be expressed in terms of
>MUST, but rather in terms of SHOULD. I wonder how it came that RFC 3280
>reached the status of an official IETF standard, if it contains one or more
>areas that are "at odds with reality".
>
>I suppose the answer is one of these:
>- RFC 3280 does not really contain areas that are "at odds with reality" -
>it's just that we do not understand them;

RFC 3280 established a requirement for a change in how DNs are 
encoded, for a future point in time. Thus, at the time the RFC was 
published as a standard of course it did not match "reality." since 
it was calling for a change.  By the way, this change was not the 
idea of the PKIX WG but rather is consistent with the overall IETF 
mandate to better accommodate character sets for a wide range of 
languages.

>- containing areas that are "at odds with reality" is not an obstacle to
>becoming a standard;

Think of the implication of your comment. if we were never able to 
call for a change in how things are done when we update a standard, 
then we could never make any changes.  obviously this would be unduly 
limiting.

>- expressions like "MUST" in IETF standard are really to be taken as mere
>suggestions;

IETF standards are voluntary. failure to comply is not punishable :-)

>- nobody really cares.

one might say that in environments where a few vendors or service 
providers control a significant market share, their deviation from 
standards, or failure to accommodate changes in standards, can have 
profound impacts.

Steve