I strongly support this draft. One of the main reasons for relaxing the
registration rules and introducing the Recommended column was to
avoid spending time debating the merits of new algorithms that everyone
knew weren't going to be standardized, and yet a huge fraction of the
mail on the list over the past few months is doing precisely that.
The obvious objection to this draft is that there might be some work
required to refine how an algorithm is used and that an I-D might not be
enough for that. I have two responses to that:
- Recent history does not seem to indicate that is the case. We're
busily debating parts of the specification that have no impact on
the wire format.
- If an algorithm isn't important enough to have Recommended=Y,
then it's not worth WG time to refine it.
If others agree that this is a good policy, then I think we should enact
it with retroactive effect, which is to say:
1. Make ECHDE/MLKEM Recommended=Y (as also suggested by
Bas's draft).
2. Decline to publish draft-ietf-tls-mlkem
-Ekr
On Mon, Feb 23, 2026 at 4:56 PM Richard Barnes <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi TLS folks,
>
> Those who have worked with me know that I hate doing unnecessary work. It
> occurred to me that the TLS WG has been doing a lot of unnecessary work on
> drafts that just register crypto algorithms. This draft proposes that we
> shouldn't do that.
>
> Submitted for your consideration,
> --Richard
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ---------
> From: <[email protected]>
> Date: Mon, Feb 23, 2026 at 2:53 PM
> Subject: New Version Notification for
> draft-barnes-tls-this-could-have-been-an-email-00.txt
> To: Richard Barnes <[email protected]>
>
>
> A new version of Internet-Draft
> draft-barnes-tls-this-could-have-been-an-email-00.txt has been successfully
> submitted by Richard Barnes and posted to the
> IETF repository.
>
> Name: draft-barnes-tls-this-could-have-been-an-email
> Revision: 00
> Title: Stop Doing Cryptographic Algorithm Drafts when Email to IANA is
> All You Need
> Date: 2026-02-24
> Group: Individual Submission
> Pages: 5
> URL:
> https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-barnes-tls-this-could-have-been-an-email-00.txt
> Status:
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-barnes-tls-this-could-have-been-an-email/
> HTML:
> https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-barnes-tls-this-could-have-been-an-email-00.html
> HTMLized:
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-barnes-tls-this-could-have-been-an-email
>
>
> Abstract:
>
> People keep pitching drafts to the TLS Working Group where the only
> thing the draft does is register a code point for a cryptographic
> algorithm. Stop doing that. It's unnecessary. Write an email to
> IANA instead.
>
>
>
> The IETF Secretariat
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
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