--On Tuesday, 05 November, 2013 19:41 -0800 ned+ietf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote: > Sure, I have access to https-capable tools. But as it happens > I prefer to *use* some tools that don't have that capability. Exactly. To give an example to make this specific, I quite often read I-Ds directly into an editor that gives me good regex-search, split-screen, and bookmark capability. It supports retrieving documents over FTP and HTTP as well as locally but, because the author made an (IMO perfectly rational) decision to avoid either doing certificate management or doing a half-a**ed job, there is no HTTPS retrieval support. > This is, or is supposed to be, an open standards body, one > that is trying to encourage as many qualified people as > possible to participate. It makes no sense at all to restrict > access in this way. Agreed, ever though I consider this more a matter of subjecting people to extra work and thereby discouraging them from quickly looking at related documents rather then "restricting access". In any case where I would be inclined to read a document directly into a editor or other reading tool, I could read it through a web browser, store it locally, read it in the editor, and then try to remember to delete it later. But, unless the document is really important, I'm frankly less likely to bother actually checking it -- and that is ultimately not in the IETF's best interest as well as not in mine. john