On Sat, Mar 28, 2015 at 10:18 AM, Stephen Farrell <stephen.farrell@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Max, > > On 28/03/15 13:47, Massimiliano Pala wrote: >> I think that allowing this as a common practice is a bit dangerous. > > What danger do you perceive here? I'm not seeing it. Nor do I see any > need at all for an "official" IETF-wide position, and in fact, such a > position is quite likely to be counterproductive IMO. > > And as Phill said, re-numbering, if it breaks code, isn't a good > plan. Asking if it would break code, etc. on the trans list, is a > totally reasonable question btw and that discussion is already > happening there. I will just add that in the crypto area, the reason I want OIDs is to remove the IETF from the evaluation process entirely. Vanity crypto takes IETF time and once an RFC issues it will be used by marketing to claim 'IETF endorses ROT13 cipher' regardless of the pledges made when the document was being processed. The value of OIDs that we cannot duplicate with an IETF scheme is that they have no connection to IETF and thus no endorsement can be claimed or implied. There seems to be a growing consensus in the crypto area for one mandatory to implement cipher and one backup cipher in case the main one is broken. I would like to see the use of IETF code points restricted to such ciphers with an escape hatch for OIDs to serve all other needs. Yes, OIDs are obnoxious, but that seems a fitting penalty for vanity crypto, no?