I support the adoption of this draft.

-sanketh

On Thu, Feb 19, 2026 at 7:32 AM David Adrian <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi Dan,
>
> >  I object to the proposal to publish draft-ietf-tls-mlkem-*. I have some
> > specific comments and objections that I would be happy to explain, but
> > procedurally it's clearly necessary as a baseline to resolve the problem
> > of persistent list censorship by the WG chairs. I'll focus on that here.
>
> It seems far more useful to post your objections on this thread, than it
> does to discuss your posting situation, given that this is a WGLC.
>
> Could you please post your specific comments and objections?
>
> On Wed, Feb 18, 2026 at 2:42 PM D. J. Bernstein <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> I object to the proposal to publish draft-ietf-tls-mlkem-*. I have some
>> specific comments and objections that I would be happy to explain, but
>> procedurally it's clearly necessary as a baseline to resolve the problem
>> of persistent list censorship by the WG chairs. I'll focus on that here.
>>
>> This censorship is a continuing assault against IETF's promise of
>> openness. The chairs had, for example, categorically barred me from
>> sending any messages to the mailing list at the time of issuing their
>> "second Working Group Last Call", a procedure with a short time limit.
>>
>> The censorship was instigated by Paul Wouters. As context, the chairs
>> had issued a false claim of "consensus" to adopt the mlkem document,
>> despite seven TLS WG participants having raised unresolved objections to
>> adoption. I followed the official procedures to object to this claim of
>> consensus. This reached Wouters, who then posted a long-list of ad-hoc
>> excuses for ignoring dissent. I had, for example, used URLs, and he
>> claimed that URLs are bad; I had used a PDF, and he claimed that PDFs
>> are bad; I have spam protection, and he claimed that spam protection is
>> bad; et cetera. Here's his original wording:
>>
>>
>> https://web.archive.org/web/20250714002707/https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/tls/eSW2K3Ql1jzMcN-Aj1EYCGOLu9o/
>>
>> One of the excuses listed by Wouters is now the claimed excuse for the
>> censorship by the WG chairs. The excuse doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
>> It's clear that taking away this excuse would simply result in Wouters
>> and the WG chairs once again abusing their power and switching to
>> another excuse for ignoring dissent (e.g., claiming that archive.org
>> URLs are bad---see how I used an archive.org URL here?). I'm writing
>> this with all due respect to the censors.
>>
>> To explain "doesn't stand up to scrutiny": IETF needs the ability to
>> modify text in IETF standards, but does _not_ need modification rights
>> for most documents distributed by IETF (such as typical messages sent to
>> IETF mailing lists, and typical Internet-Drafts). That's why RFC 5378
>> provides an official procedure to opt out of IETF modifications. This
>> procedure is exercised in various IETF documents such as RFC 5831. I'm
>> using the same procedure. For further quotes from and links to the
>> relevant IETF rules, see https://cr.yp.to/2025/20251024-rules.pdf.
>>
>> RFC 5378 does _not_ give WG chairs or IESG any control over, or any
>> authority to retaliate against, people using the opt-out process---and
>> yet this retaliation is exactly what Wouters and the TLS WG chairs are
>> now doing, as a thinly veiled excuse for ignoring dissent. Meanwhile the
>> chairs have continued to allow more restrictive copyright boilerplate
>> (not following the official IETF text for opting out of modifications)
>> in, e.g., dozens of messages from Zscaler's Yaroslav Rosomakho, who had
>> written (inter alia) "I strongly support adoption of this document". I
>> suppose the chairs will now ask Rosomakho to stop doing that, but this
>> charade isn't going to hide what's actually going on here.
>>
>> Can I stop opting out? Well, sure, I _could_ allow IETF management to
>> modify my text in any way it wants, publish the results, misattribute to
>> me things that I didn't write, remove credit for things I did write,
>> feed my text to AI engines for manipulation, and collect money for all
>> of this, without asking me for any further permission. But, again, the
>> opt-out excuse for censorship is just one of many excuses that Wouters
>> had listed in the first place, and it's not as if there's something
>> stopping Wouters and the chairs from making up further excuses.
>>
>> RFC 3934 says that "any suspension of posting privileges is subject to
>> appeal, as described in RFC 2026". RFC 2026 appears to require the first
>> step to be to "discuss the matter with the Working Group's chair(s)". So
>> I'm hereby complaining to the WG chairs about the continuing pattern of
>> censorship described above. The foundation of this complaint is, again,
>> IETF's promise of openness; censoring dissent turns this promise into
>> fraud. I'm filing this complaint on list as per the transparency
>> requirements from Section 8 of RFC 2026.
>>
>> ---D. J. Bernstein
>>
>>
>> ===== NOTICES =====
>>
>> This document may not be modified, and derivative works of it may not be
>> created, and it may not be published except as an Internet-Draft. (That
>> sentence is the official language from IETF's "Legend Instructions" for
>> the situation that "the Contributor does not wish to allow modifications
>> nor to allow publication as an RFC". I'm fine with redistribution of
>> copies of this document; the issue is with modification.)
>>
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>>
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