[TLS] Re: WG Adoption Call for ML-KEM Post-Quantum Key Agreement for TLS 1.3

[Sean Turner <[e-mail]>]

> On Apr 18, 2025, at 10:02 AM, D. J. Bernstein <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> Bellebaum, Thomas writes:
>> I am counting 22 expressions in favor of adoption and 7 opposing
>> adoption.
> 
> Thanks for doing the work to tally this, and for posting the details so
> that people can check your message and post any necessary adjustments.
> 
> These numbers sound radically different from the AD's portrayal ("67
> responses ... vast majority was in favour ... a few dissenting
> opinions"). My own impression, from having read all messages as they
> came in, was about a quarter of the people opposing, so I will be very
> surprised if adjustments end up big enough to rescue the AD's portrayal.
> 
> So: Can we please now have an explanation from the chairs of how they
> arrived at "It looks like we have consensus to adopt this draft as a
> working group item"?
> 
> To prevent any confusion about the procedures: Based on what I've seen
> (the whole discussion, not just the fragmentary information conveyed by 
> numbers), I disagree with this declaration of consensus. I am therefore
> invoking the "first discuss the matter with the Working Group's
> chair(s)" provision of RFC 2026, Section 6.5.1. I ask for this
> discussion to be on-list for transparency.
> 
> Within that, what I'm suggesting---both because I think it's the natural
> way forward, and because of transparency considerations; I'm not saying
> this is the only possibility under RFC 2026---is for the chairs to start
> by explaining to the WG how they evaluated consensus, so that we can all
> consider the explanation, rather than starting with a bunch of
> conflicting guesses from the rest of us regarding how consensus might
> have been evaluated.
> 
> ---D. J. Bernstein

Joe and I, as WG chairs and with Deirdre recusing as she is an author, declared consensus to adopt draft-connolly-tls-mlkem-key-agreement. We did this because there is clearly sufficient interest to work on this draft.  Different working groups have different styles with respect to how much work is done by the individual author, versus how much work is done by the WG after adopting the work. Now that the draft is a WG draft, we will follow WG process by discussing concerns, already raised and new ones, under IETF change control and progressing after there is consensus.

spt