Re: [pkix] Simple Certificate Enrollment Protocol (SCEP)

[Stephen Kent <[e-mail]>]

Paul,

>
>> Several later Cisco staff approached the IETF asking that SCEP be published as an RFC.
>> They agreed that it could be labelled Historic.
> There was also a discussion of labeling it Informational, because that was a more accurate description: it was a vendor-proprietary solution that was being documented so other vendors could interoperate if they wanted to, even though the solution was kinda sucky.
The discussion about a label of historic involved the PKIX chairs, the 
cognizant
Sec AD, and the IETF chair. I think this superseded the discussion of an 
informational
label.
>
>> So, Tim Polk and I re-wrote the seriously-flawed I-D that they had been repeatedly
>> published (to keep it alive) as an individual submission.  We got very close to a
>> reasonable version that could be published as Historic. Then, during lunch at an
>> IETF meeting, a different Cisco staff member showed up to discuss the status of SCEP.
>> At this lunch meeting he noted that the reason Cisco wanted an RFC number for SCEP
>> (irrespective of the status)  was to be able to cite it in a submission to 3GPP!
>> Apparently, this staff member had not been instructed to lie about their real intent.
>> That  ended the discussion  of SCEP as an RFC.
> Nice word, "lie". It indicates that everyone at Cisco has the same intent, and they are all instructed in what to say in public. Anyone working with the Cisco IPsec team at the time knows that such an assertion is demonstrably false, even though it makes for good drama here.
I agree that Cisco may not have coordinated the rationale we were given 
for publishing
SCEP, but we got the same story from multiple individuals in a few 
different
parts of the organization. As an outsider, I think that "lie" is an 
appropriate characterization.

Steve