Re: [openpgp] rfc4880bis and draft-openpgp-iana-registry-updates-01

[Ronald Tse <[e-mail]>]

Hi Ben, Derek,

Derek is absolutely right, here.

I fully agree that managing two documents is more complex than handling one.

I'll note that for TLS 1.3 we did separate documents, RFCs 8446 and 8447,
since there were a *lot* of registry changes and we did want a permanent
record of them, but that split caused a lot of extra work to ensure things
were synchronized during AUTH48.

However, the OpenPGP IANA update document was created from a suggestion by the Security AD, where the TLS registry update model was the acceptable role model to follow. RFC 8447 is at 17 pages; this document is close to 30 — the OpenPGP IANA registries are numerous and changes to them many, since a lot of them have been dilapidated since the days of 2440.

If we merge this into 4880bis and remove them at publication, we’re adding 30 pages (temporarily) and then maybe removing 25 at publication. And we lose the permanent record that RFC 8447 provides for TLS. Perhaps there is an argument that the registries of OpenPGP aren't as important (!) as TLS’s for permanent record keeping, and therefore should be relegated to an Internet-Draft, but it doesn’t sound like a good reason to forgo that.

Given that the IETF process has already processed the pair of 8446/8447 successfully in a synchronized way, would it be possible that it’s even easier this time round?

Ron

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Ronald Tse
Ribose Inc.