Complaint to IESG regarding AD decision (Daniel J. Bernstein) - 2025-10-15
Response - 2025-10-31
The IESG received an appeal from Dan Bernstein on October 15, 2025 related to dispute processing action taken by the Security Area Director (SEC AD) on the decision of the TLS Working Group (WG) Chairs for declaring a rough consensus to adopt draft-connolly-tls-mlkem-key-agreement. This is the second time that the appellant has filed an appeal related to this WG decision. The first appeal response can be found here.
SEC AD Paul Wouters did not participate in the processing of this appeal.
The IESG notes that this appeal was submitted with text which is non-conformant to RFC5387. The IESG requested this text be removed on October 20, 2025. The appellant did not respond. Per IESG Statement on Clarifying Derivative Works Rights, the IESG, as the process owner, has chosen to process this appeal and ignore this non-conformant text for the present appeal. However, the IESG provides notice to the appellant that future appeals should not have this non-conformant text.
This appeal repeats and raises new procedural matters on submitting and handling disputes which have already been answered through other means. These include:
- On formatting and content of appeals – see IESG Statement on Conflict Resolution and Appeals (effective after the publication date of 1-Oct-2025)
- On contributions and derivative rights – see the IESG Statement on Clarifying Derivative Works Rights
- On transparency of appeal processing – see the IESG response to the first appeal on this topic. There is a pending appeal to the IAB sent on 14-Oct-2025
- On processes that all IETF participants need to know to participate– see IETF Note Well
The IESG declines to address these further.
The IESG has determined that a specific, unresolved question remains implicit in this and the previous appeal regarding the TLS WG’s decision:
Was rough consensus to adopt draft-connolly-tls-mlkem-key-agreement in the TLS Working Group appropriately called by the WG chairs?
Accordingly, the IESG has decided that this narrow question should be evaluated on its merits within the context of the current appeal.
Ordinarily, such a matter would be referred back to the responsible AD for assessment. However, the IESG notes that the appellant has not presented this specific question to the responsible AD in a concise manner and without procedural complications that would allow for straightforward processing.
In the interest of clarity and community benefit, the IESG requests that the responsible AD directly investigate and provide an answer to the above question concerning the consensus to adopt draft-connolly-tls-mlkem-key-agreement, taking into account the context provided in this appeal response.