[TLS] Re: 2nd Working Group Last Call for The SSLKEYLOGFILE Formatfor TLS

[Martin Thomson <[e-mail]>]

On Tue, Feb 25, 2025, at 06:56, Aaron Zauner wrote:
> To be clear; I agree with that in principle but have the feeling that 
> the discussion around an applicable threat model misses the issue of 
> what should be in IETF and what should be in development docs, 
> debugging tools etc entirely. I'm not currently working on maintaining 
> a crypto lib as many of you are but you can't honestly tell me it's not 
> possible to work on your end without IETF guidance on debug specifics 
> that allow encrypted traffic detail export -- which you already have in 
> place for debug and dev anyway.

This also misses the point.  The existence of this format (it will exist whether the IETF publishes a document or not) has enabled interoperation between a number of tools.  The point of moving this work to the IETF was to transfer governance from what was ad hoc to something recognized and respected by the community of people who build the interoperating tools.

Some people view interoperable standards as somehow changing the demand and availability of the thing they document.  Maybe that's true in some markets, but my experience is that the demand is what causes the creation of standards, not the other way around.  Also, if there were not already interoperation and you were concerned that interoperation would cause problems, this might be problematic, but this is a case where that interoperation already exists.