[cabfpub] [Ext] Ballot 202 - Underscore and Wildcard Characters

[Rich Smith]

Thanks for the info, Paul.  That new definition, at least to me, seems less clear for our purposes than the current one.  That really illustrates my point well though.  I don't think we want to tie critical definitions to an outside source that could be changed by groups who likely are not considering TLS/WebPKI domain verification in their changes.  They may well make changes that for their purposes clarifies things, but for our purposes has the potential to introduce ambiguities, or otherwise change the understood, accepted procedures.

-Rich

-----Original Message-----
From: Public [mailto:public-bounces at cabforum.org] On Behalf Of Paul Hoffman via Public
Sent: Monday, July 31, 2017 1:20 PM
To: CA/Browser Forum Public Discussion List <public at cabforum.org>
Subject: Re: [cabfpub] [Ext] Ballot 202 - Underscore and Wildcard Characters

On Jul 31, 2017, at 10:45 AM, Rich Smith via Public <public at cabforum.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi Peter,
> Overall, I like your suggestions, but could I ask that in definitions where you refer to outside RFC definitions that you include those outside definitions verbatim so that someone reading the BRs does not have to go scouring through all the various RFCs?  For example:
> Change:
> Domain Label: A “label” as defined in RFC 7719
>  
> To:
> Domain Label: A “Label” as defined in RFC 7719: The identifier of an individual node in the sequence of nodes identified by a fully qualified domain name.
>  
> This will make it much easier to parse the BRs on their own.  Also, I know in general that as a best practice simply pointing to the reference is better so that if the reference definition changes, so would our definitions w/out having to take further action.  However in this situation, I would consider that a bug rather than a feature.  I don’t think we should allow changes to externally referenced definition to automatically change our definitions, at least in this case, without discussion and voting.

To (apologetically) throw a spanner into the works here: RFC 7719 is being revised, and this very definition is changing to be clearer. The current draft says:

   Label:  An ordered list of zero or more octets and which makes up a
      portion of a domain name.  Using graph theory, a label identifies
      one node in a portion of the graph of all possible domain names.


--Paul Hoffman
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