Subject: Re: Last Call: draft-ietf-openpgp-rfc2440bis (OpenPGP Message Format) to Proposed Standard

From: Jon Callas <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2007 01:05:18 -0700

> There are reference to old documents, including:
>
>   RFC 2279 -> RFC 3629
>   RFC 1750 -> RFC 4086
>

Thanks.

> There are normative reference to non-standards track RFCs, including:
>

>   RFC 1641

I just removed this.

>   RFC 1951

This is the definition of ZIP/DEFLATE. We have to have it. It is also  
the best documentation of ZIP there is. Nonetheless, I moved it to  
Informative despite the fact that it is a normative reference,  
because idnits complained about it, too.

>   RFC 1991 (which documents is intended to obsolete?)

RFC 1991 is the RFC that describes PGP 2.6.x. With 2440bis, we have  
deprecated those mechanisms. Consequently, they are less well-defined  
in 2440bis than they were in 2440. If an implementation wants to be  
compatible with PGP 2.6.x, it is more important that this be  
referenced. I moved it to informative, too, because idnits complained.

>   RFC 2144

This is the description of CAST5. Idnits didn't complain about this  
one, so I left it.

> The following reference are never cited in the text as far as I can
> tell.  Most of them should likely be removed, but citing
> [BLEICHENBACHER] at some appropriate point may be useful.
>
>     [RFC1423]        Balenson, D., "Privacy Enhancement for Internet
>                      Electronic Mail: Part III: Algorithms, Modes, and
>                      Identifiers", RFC 1423, October 1993.

Moved to Informative. It would be a shame not to honor the  
contribution that PEM made to secure email.

>
>     [RFC1641]        Goldsmith, D. and M. Davis, "Using Unicode with
>                      MIME", RFC 1641, July 1994.
>

I just removed it.

>     [BLEICHENBACHER] Bleichenbacher, Daniel, "Generating Elgamal
>                      signatures without knowing the secret key,"
>                      Eurocrypt 96. Note that the version in the
>                      proceedings has an error. A revised version is
>                      available at the time of writing from
>                      <ftp://ftp.inf.ethz.ch/pub/publications/papers/ti
>                      /isc/ElGamal.ps>
>

I added a reference in the discussion of Elgamal signatures.

>     [DONNERHACKE]    Donnerhacke, L., et. al, "PGP263in - an improved
>                      international version of PGP", ftp://ftp.iks-
>                      jena.de/mitarb/lutz/crypt/software/pgp/
>

Removed, since we're deprecating 2.6.x.

>     [MAURER]         Ueli Maurer, "Modelling a Public-Key
>                      Infrastructure", Proc. 1996 European Symposium on
>                      Research in Computer Security (ESORICS' 96),
>                      Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer- 
> Verlag,
>                      vol. 1146, pp. 325-350, Sep 1996.
>

I'm leaving this in, because it's a good informative reference  
despite there being no specific place for it.

>     [RFC1983]        Malkin, G., "Internet Users' Glossary", FYI  
> 18, RFC
>                      1983, August 1996.
>

Removed.

Thanks for the comments.

	Jon