[Cryptography] Is ASN.1 still the thing?

[Nico Williams]

On Mon, Nov 27, 2017 at 12:25:29PM -0500, Jerry Leichter wrote:
> But ... while historically fascinating and instructive, Multics isn't
> coming back.  CORBA isn't coming back, though it continues to be used
> in a some specialized, existing applications.  And ASN.1 and the xER's
> aren't coming back either.

"not coming back" != "going away".

Multics may not be coming back, but it's mostly gone.  ASN.1 may not be
coming back but it's still around, and will continue to be around for a
long time.  That's because there's a ton of legacy using ASN.1 and not
so much using Multics.

I'm all for a better scheme (you know already what I think of the TLV
xERs).  But it seems like every time someone sets out to make a better
scheme, they repeat mistakes already made before them.  Protocol Buffers
is a DER-like TLV.  Whoever designed Protocol Buffers evidently didn't
take the time to learn from the past.  And so now we have BER/DER _and_
PB to interface with.  Fantastic.

Nico
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