I'd like pause for a for the moment and say to those find
themselves saying:
"We have gone over this issue before! Do we have to go
over it again??"
I believe the answer must be YES! I believe the reason why it
keeps coming up by new members of the group is that the draft
lacks what in P1003 we called "rationale" sections.
Rationale sections are parallel sections to the draft that
describe "the why", and that give some additional insight into
the decision process of the group.
The answer is yes, we must go over that ground again because the
consensus was not sufficiently documented in the draft. Fortunately
this time it should be easier and quicker for those who know
the group history to document their response in the form of
rationale text.
Let me give an example. Say we have a "Section 1.3: Limitations".
And for example, assume that in section 1.3 we state:
A given LRW key should not be used to encrypt more than
2^64 16-byte blocks.
Then in an appendix we would have a parallel "Section R1.3:
Limitations rationale" where we could state:
(I'm hand waving here to serve as an example. I'm not stating
the text below as fact.)
The limitation of encrypting 2^64 16-byte was recommend
because of the increased possibility of leaking very small
amounts of plaintext. The working group believed that the
2^64 16-byte block was not a serious limitation in the year
2006. Transmitting that much data over a 128GBit bus would
take over 544 years.
So HAD the committee documented this consensus, THEN you could
would great effect say:
Are you sure you understand section 1.3 and R1.3? If you
do, then is there some text that we could add to that section
that will make the point more clear? Or is there a point that
we missed that we need to take into account?
If you go to IEEE ballot without these recurring / "we already
discussed this issue!" matters being fully addressed, then you
run the risk of IEEE balloters voting without the benefit of
knowing the working group's experience and consensus.
I believe that adding rationale sections to the draft will
improve the chances of a successful IEEE ballot and it will
increase the value the ballot process.
chongo () /\oo/\
