Subject: Re: Ah, I see the cause of the situation now... (tls-authz situation)

From: [email-masked] (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2009 16:39:13 -0500 (EST)

> From: Alex Loret de Mola <[email-masked]>

    > The last call ... instructs the public to contact this mailing list in
    > order to express their comments.

No, it instructs _the people it was sent to_, the IETF community (which is of
course open to anyone who wants to join, with no pre-conditions or cost), not
"the public". Viz.:

    >> This Last Call is intended to determine whether the IETF community had
						       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
    >> consensus to publish draft-housley-tls-authz-extns as a proposed
    >> standard 
    >> ...
    >> The IESG solicits final comments on whether the IETF community has
						   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
    >> consensus to publish draft-housley-tls-authz-extns as a proposed
    >> standard.

This doesn't mean hundreds of Toms, Sallies and Harries who have no
familiarity with the IETF, or any detailed knowledge of the specifics of the
case, are being encouraged to basically cut-and-paste comments from a press
release (which is effectively what the FSF document is) and spam the community
list with them.

(The IETF community of course is fully aware that to do so would be unwelcome
in the extreme, so we don't need to add instructions to _them_ not to drill
holes in their skulls.)

    > If the intent wasn't to solicit these kinds of responses, the wording
    > of last calls may need to be amended in the future

Well, that might be useful. Maybe a link to a web page with fuller
comment on the subject?

	Noel