Re: [idn] WG last call summary

["D. J. Bernstein" <djb@cr.yp.to>]

Marc Blanchet writes:
> We will be sending the documents for IESG consideration for Proposed 
> Standard on March 11th 2002.

That's outrageous. IDNA has received strong written objections from at
least fifteen regular WG participants and _hundreds_ of other people.
IDNA will cause a tremendous amount of damage, including bounced email,
web link failures, widespread user confusion, and massive costs---much
higher than necessary---for software development and deployment.

You say that you are obliged to ignore all these objections because the
IDN WG has to _do something_. But the IETF procedures don't say ``It's
okay to make an incredibly destructive modification to the Internet
protocol suite if you have to _do something_.''

I hope that the IDN WG can settle on a safe course of action. However,
until that happens, we will have to stick to the status quo.

---D. J. Bernstein, Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics,
Statistics, and Computer Science, University of Illinois at Chicago