Re: [idn] WG last call summary

["William Blackwood" <wblackwo@tampabay.rr.com>]

Bernstein's misrepresentations of fact and quotes are frequent and well
documented.  Bernstein lacks credibility.

Best to just ignore Bernstein's senseless drivel.


----- Original Message -----
From: D. J. Bernstein <djb@cr.yp.to>
To: <idn@ops.ietf.org>
Cc: <ietf@ietf.org>; <iesg@ietf.org>; <iab@isi.edu>
Sent: Thursday, March 14, 2002 4:19 PM
Subject: Re: [idn] WG last call summary


> Once again: IDNA has received strong written objections from at least
> fifteen regular WG participants and _hundreds_ of other people.
>
> Here are some typical quotes from IDNA proponents explicitly refusing to
> take these objections into account:
>
>    * ``Just protesting doesn't count, if an alternative or fix isn't
>      included'';
>
>    * ``the Chair's responsibility ... is to move work along ...
>      discouraging discussion of problems ... for which realistic
>      solutions ... have not been proposed'';
>
>    * ``unless you have a TC/SC solution which you willing to contributed
>      to the group, I consider this discussion closed'';
>
>    * ``You have only repeated problems that we already knows. You have
>      not demonstrated any solution which is technical possible now.''
>
> These responses are all missing the point. When a user objects to IDNA,
> saying--for example---that IDNA will produce ``conflicts and chaos for
> Internet users of Han characters,'' you can't dismiss his objection by
> saying that you believe that the other proposals are even worse.
>
> As I commented before, 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_.'' Until the IDN WG settles on a safe course
> of action, we will have to stick to the status quo.
>
> I also summarized why people are objecting to IDNA: ``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.'' Crocker asserts
> that ``such false claims have been dealt with repeatedly.'' Let's go
> back to the videotape:
>
>    * IDNA co-author Adam Costello claimed in an IDN message on Sun, 27
>      May 2001 21:30:52 +0000 that, under IDNA, ``nothing will actually
>      break (mail will get through, web pages will load, etc).''
>
>    * After the IDN WG identified several serious interoperability
>      problems in the IDNA architecture---the result being that mail
>      would bounce, web links would fail, etc.---I challenged Costello's
>      ``nothing will actually break'' claim.
>
>    * In an IDN message on Thu, 19 Jul 2001 04:31:48 +0000, Costello
>      admitted that IDNA _would_ break things, and that his previous
>      claim was wrong: ``I overstated it. I was wrong. Sorry.''
>      (Naturally, he continued by saying that even more things would be
>      broken by another proposal.)
>
> I recently asked a simple question about how IDNA is supposed to work,
> from a programmer's perspective: under UNIX, if LANG is en_US.UTF-8,
> should the MH/NMH ``show'' mail-displaying program convert names from
> the IDNA character set to UTF-8? Costello, aware that a ``yes'' answer
> would cause interoperability problems and that a ``no'' answer would
> mean that users see gobbledygook instead of non-ASCII glyphs, ignored
> the question.
>
> ---D. J. Bernstein, Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics,
> Statistics, and Computer Science, University of Illinois at Chicago
>