On Tue, Jul 8, 2014 at 3:19 PM, Joe Touch <touch@xxxxxxx> wrote: >> What's the problem? How has the process been circumvented, in its >> letter or spirit? > > I guess the spirit; I had thought that the security community within the > IETF had a more formal process for defining new terms, but also note that > its glossary is "Informational" (not BCP). We don't have a single set of terms that everyone uses. The terminology used in the space of GSS, SASL, Kerberos (these three all in one WG now), IPsec, TLS, SSHv2, EAP, and so on all differ, sometimes subtly, sometimes radically. Unifying our sets of terminology would be so difficult as to be impossible, except over time, by piecemeal adoption of new terms. Adding new terms that we can all use is much easier, and given the state of play, shouldn't really require heavy-duty process -- otherwise we couldn't even make piecemeal progress as to common terminology. Nico --