Request for feedback from server/client implementers using\n non-OpenSSL TLS stacks

[Rohan Kumar]

On Mon, Nov 08, 2021 at 01:57:53AM +0000, tidux@sdf.org wrote:
> It looks like BearSSL is just waiting for the TLS 1.3 RFC to be
> finalized, which is a totally reasonable thing to do.  I would encourage
> a similar level of patience for Gemini mandating TLS 1.3.

TLS 1.3 was finalized in 2018:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8446

This is acknowledged in the first sentence of BearSSL's TLS 1.3 status page:
https://bearssl.org/tls13.html

> Long draft periods cause early adopters to have all kinds of wonderful
> broken implementations that must then be worked around until the next
> revision makes them all obsolete. Looking at you, 802.11n.

There's a balance to strike here. Early adoption at nontrivial scale provides valuable feedback and has thus emerged as a critical part of the collaborative process employed by the IETF. Of course, this doesn't mean we should treat drafts as finalized standards.

In the end, this isn't relevant to TLS 1.3 because TLS 1.3 has been finalized for over three years. Certain optional extensions aren't finalized, though; they make for a separate discussion.

-- 
/Seirdy