[cabfpub] Creation of S/MIME Certificates Working Group

[Ryan Sleevi]

On Tue, Feb 18, 2020 at 1:57 PM Tim Hollebeek via Public <
public at cabforum.org> wrote:

>
>    - Automatic cessation of membership
>
>
>    - The balloted wording around software update cadences introduces some
>       precision/definition issues that would likely prove troublesome in and of
>       themselves.
>       - While some of those issues could be addressed through
>       wordsmithing, the entire precept that membership may be automatically
>       removed based on various conditions (both for Certificate Consumers
>       *and* Issuers) is itself problematic and I think an area rife for
>       improvement (both here and in other charters).
>
> REJECT: The language is consistent with the language in the other working
> group charters.  Introducing new inconsistencies in this charter would be
> confusing for all involved.  If Apple believes these provisions are
> problematic, potential improvements should be discussed an applied across
> all chartered working groups.
>

I'm not quite sure I understand this rationale, could you explain more.

Why does this charter need to follow the SCWG/CSWG charter? Who is "all
involved" that would be confused?

It seems very valuable to learn from mistakes and concerns and address
them, but perhaps I'm overlooking something?


>
>    - Invalid membership requirements/processes
>
>
>    - I think Ryan Sleevi has explained most of this better than I could,
>       so I’ll refer to his message instead:
>       https://cabforum.org/pipermail/public/2020-February/014874.html.
>       - I looked, but failed to find information as to how mail transfer
>       agents consume S/MIME certificates. However, since it’s included in the
>       ballot I can only conclude that the proposer has relevant and detailed
>       insight into how and why this is a valid categorization for Certificate
>       Consumers and had hoped to be pointed to that information so as to better
>       understand the scope of this proposed CWG.
>
> REJECT: This was discussed extensively during the governance reform
> process, and the current procedures were deemed to be sufficient.  This
> charter simply follows those precedents.  Indeed, two other chartered
> working groups were successfully bootstrapped already.
>

I understand one group was the Code Signing Working Group, which perhaps
did not have careful or close review from all Forum members due to the
explicit lack of intent to participate in the venue or fundamental
disagreements about the working group objectives.

However, I'm not sure, what's the other Chartered Working Group you're
thinking of? The SCWG explicitly did not follow this process, as part of
the Legacy Working Group transition, and so I'm not sure what the other CWG
is that avoided this?

Also, while I agree that this was discussed extensively, I must
respectfully disagree that the "current procedures were deemed to be
sufficient". The current (proposed) procedures were known to be problematic
in bootstrapping, something we discussed, and something we knew we could
avoid by defining an open and welcoming charter. This WG does not seem to
set out to do this.

In all fairness, this seems a repeat of the same issues the bedeviled, and
nearly derailed, the Forum in it's first start. The attempt to exclude some
CAs, via narrowly and restrictively scoped membership, nearly resulted in
the implosion of the Forum, as the management@ archives from 2009 show.
Ultimately, it was the Forum's rejection of such exclusionary attempts that
helped grow the membership. In particular, it was DigiCert who some were
trying to prevent from joining the Forum, so it would be unfortunate to
have DigiCert repeat that same process.

I'm hoping you're open to addressing these issues, but I don't think we can
support the charter without this issue being addressed.
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