[OTR-dev] the state on mpOTR?

Guy K. Kloss gk at mega.co.nz
Thu Mar 27 16:46:48 EDT 2014


Hi Nadim,

On 28/03/14 09:30, Nadim Kobeissi wrote:
> We’ve been working on preparing a first draft for the specification of the protocol. Once our first draft is ready and reviewed, we will open it for public review on this list. However, the current state of the specification draft is not mature enough to be open for public review. It would be a better use of everyone’s time if we waited until we could show them a substantial, mature draft. As I’m sure you understand, these things take time, and we need to make sure we have something substantial before we ask everyone on this list to generously contribute their time to review our proposed spec.

Yes, I fully understand about that. And that's fine. But there was an
initial call, and the ones who have responded didn't even get back any
sort of signal. At least I didn't. And I suppose it's a matter of
fairness to at least keep those who volunteered up to date on the
progress and process, even if not the content as it may not be up to
scratch, yet.

As I said, there was a public call as well as responses, and everything
else (including the blog post) was withdrawn from otr-dev as a forum,
and happened behind closed doors.

> Later this April we are organizing a summit here in Montreal to invite visiting cryptographers to review and comment on our first draft before we open it for public review. I see that you work for Mega — one of your colleagues (Ximin Luo) was already invited to this summit, so surely we haven’t been as “fishy” as you suggest, and I’m not sure why you seem to be complaining about a lack of involvement.

Well, I didn't refer to "you" (not you personally or the group) as being
fishy, but the intransparency in which the project is conducted.
Coincidentally, I have heard about Ximin attending that meeting this
week, yes. But has there been any sort of information flowing to those
others who did reply to your mail on this list previously? I doubt so.
It seems a bit elitist that way, after calling out publicly for
participation.

> Regarding our upcoming summit, we’ve taken care to invite a mix of theory-focused, implementation-focused and usability-focused individuals so that we can use that summit to make sure we have something substantial to present for public review in May. Rest assured that once we’ve done all the polishing we can, we will open a draft for public review in order to incorporate comments and suggestions.

OK, thanks for that. This is some type of information that I find quite
helpful already. You know, just the knowledge of that something actually
is progressing, whether it's behind or on track, etc.

Obviously I'd be more keen on getting further detailed insights already,
to avoid (from my/our perspective) making certain decisions that may
clash with a future mpOTR (even if things are still in flux), but I can
live with that.

So, no hard feelings. Please, only just keep the otr-dev list generally
posted on high level things. After all, I guess that's only fair as
mpOTR is logically an extension to OTR, and this is where people are
expecting to be kept up to date on the state of things.

All good, and thanks for the feedback,

Guy

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