Re: [pkcs11] CKM_SEAL_KEY

[Michael StJohns <msj@nthpermutation.com>]

On 7/10/2013 3:18 PM, Tim Hudson wrote:
> On 11/07/2013 2:45 AM, Michael StJohns wrote:
> > "Why" questions are some of the most insidious and useless ones for
> > getting work done in standards.
> Actually the "Why" questions are the most important ones to be asking in
> developing a cooperative standard to ensure we have a common
> understanding of both the problem being addressed and the problem
> explicitly not being addressed.


If you ask me the "why" of pretty much any proposal, the base answer is 
either "There's a bug in the spec and this is one way of fixing it" or 
"There is some capability missing that I perceive I need and this is one 
way of doing it".  Both of those are objective answers.     The rest of 
it is all argumentative cruft that can and should be gotten at in other 
ways.

If you ask me for a use case - I can provide my vision of how the 
capability might be used.  That's not a "WHY", but a how.  If you 
provide your own use case and ask me how the proposal applies, that's a 
"how" and a good one and will probably result in changes and additions 
to the proposal for the better.

If you point out an issue with the proposal AND provide an idea of what 
you think is a better approach, that's a HOW as well.  I might not agree 
with the approach, but I will certainly discuss it with you and changes 
may occur.

If all you do is ask "why did you make that design choice" and "why 
didn't you consider this" and ... instead of contributing your thoughts 
on how to actually improve things - that's just tearing things down.  
I've found few instances of "why" that are particularly helpful - both 
here and in the IETF.

In the current case "Why do we need the PKCS11 consumer involved in that 
at all" -  "There is some capability missing that I perceive I need and 
this is one way of doing it AND the PKCS11 vendors aren't meeting my 
need in their products, and one reason they aren't is probably related 
to not having a standard PKCS11 way of doing things."

I'm always going to look with suspicion on any "why" question.  I'm 
going to look with favor on "how" questions and "how about this 
approach" suggestions.  You'll note from my comments on other proposals, 
I tend to follow my own guidelines.

Mike