Re: [TLS] Confirming consensus: TLS1.3->TLS*

[Viktor Dukhovni <[e-mail]>]

On Fri, Nov 18, 2016 at 11:12:48AM +0900, Sean Turner wrote:

> At IETF 97, the chairs lead a discussion to resolve whether the WG should
> rebrand TLS1.3 to something else.  Slides can be found @
> https://www.ietf.org/proceedings/97/slides/slides-97-tls-rebranding-aka-pr612-01.pdf.
> 
> The consensus in the room was to leave it as is, i.e., TLS1.3, and to not
> rebrand it to TLS 2.0, TLS 2, or TLS 4.  We need to confirm this decision
> on the list so please let the list know your top choice between:
> 
> - Leave it TLS 1.3
> - Rebrand TLS 2.0
> - Rebrand TLS 2
> - Rebrand TLS 4

TLS 4 sounds about right to me:

    * Conveys the substantial protocol changes
    * Avoids any confusion from SSLv2/SSLv3 bearing higher numbers than TLS 1.x
    * If someone happens to call it SSLv4 it will not be confusing.
    * Matches the minor version on the wire protocol

Though with this choice, the next version would likely be TLS 5,
whether or not it is a major change or just incremental change, I
don't think it will going forward be important to convey that some
version updates are minor.  A non-branching integral sequence feels
about right.

The only downside I see is that it becomes unclear what to call
some future protocol version with a wire protocol major number not
equal to 3.  My take is that such a protocol would no longer be
TLS (it would presumably have an incompatible HELLO and/or record
layer format and would not be able to negotiate older protocol
versions), so there's likely not much point in calling such a
hypothetical beast "TLS".

-- 
	Viktor.