Subject: Re: I-D ACTION:draft-ietf-pkix-pr-tsa-01.txt

From: Denis Pinkas <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 04 Jul 2002 16:16:56 +0200

David,

> [email-masked] wrote:
> > A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts
> > directories. This draft is a work item of the Public-Key Infrastructure
> > (X.509) Working Group of the IETF.
> >
> >         Title           : Policy Requirements for Time-Stamping Authorities
> >         Author(s)       : D. Pinkas, N. Pope, J. Ross
> >         Filename        : draft-ietf-pkix-pr-tsa-01.txt
> >         Pages           : 39
> >         Date            : 26-Jun-02

> > This document specifies policy requirements relating to the
> > operation of Time-stamping Authorities (TSAs). It defines policy
> > requirements on the operation and management practices of TSAs such
> > that subscribers and relying parties may have confidence in the
> > operation of the time-stamping services.
> > The contents of this Informational RFC is technically equivalent to
> > ETSI TS 102 023 V1.2.1 (2002-06) [TS 102023]. The ETSI TS is under
> > the ETSI Copyright (C). Individual copies of this ETSI deliverable
> > can be downloaded from http://www.etsi.org
> > This document is an Internet-Draft and is NOT offered in accordance
> > with Section 10 of RFC 2026, and the authors do not provide the IETF
> > with any rights other than to publish as an Internet-Draft.
 
> Since this draft concerns policy requirements for an Internet Standards
> Track protocol (TSP, i.e. RFC 3161), it should be part of the Internet
> Standards Process. RFC 2026 is clear about that meaning that it MUST be
> subject to Section 10.

You will find below, some text copied from RFC 2026, explaining why this
document is progressed on the Informational Track:

   Specifications that have been prepared outside of the Internet
   community and are not incorporated into the Internet Standards
   Process by any of the provisions of section 10 may be published as
   Informational RFCs, with the permission of the owner and the
   concurrence of the RFC Editor.

Note also that RFC 2529 (Certificate Policy and Certification Practices
Framework) which applies to CAs is not issued on the Standards Tracks but as
an Informational Standard (This RFC is being updated. A separate mailing
list has been formed for the discussion of the update). 

Now, reading again the current abstract, some confusion is possible. 
So I am proposing to re-use some text from the inner content of the 
document and duplicate it in the abstract to form a new abstract as follows:

   This document defines requirements for a baseline time-stamp policy 
   for TSAs issuing time-stamp tokens, supported by public key 
   certificates, with an accuracy of 1 second or better. A TSA may 
   define its own policy which enhances the policy defined in the 
   current document. Such a policy shall incorporate or further 
   constrain the requirements identified in the current document. 

We certainly do not expect that all implementations of RFC 3161 will
implement this baseline policy.  It is put forward for information as a
baseline policy that has been defined. Other policies are expected to
exist.

I hope that this should solve your concern.

Regards,

Denis
 
> (It is possible for documents that are not part of the Internet Standards
> Process to be published as Informational RFCs without being subject to
> Section 10, as described in RFC 2026 Section 4.2.2, but that should be
> reserved for documents that have no direct relation to any Standards Track
> protocols.)
> 
> - --
> David Hopwood <[email-masked]>