[cap-talk] Capability Semantics

[Ian G]

David Hopwood wrote:
> Jed at Webstart wrote:

>> I can understand an emphasis on http, but I think at least email
>> must be included.  At present it seems that email is nearly (absolutely?)
>> the only means for individual domain to domain (e.g. person to
>> person) communication.  Without the ability to safely send
>> capabilities in email, it's difficult for me to see how any richer
>> object based sharing structure can be built up.


My own view on this is that email is unsaveable.
It won't be fixed, it won't die but it will be
supplanted by other tools.

> Another reason why you need to consider email, is that email is a
> "push" protocol, while HTTP is primarily a "pull" protocol (although
> it can be used for "push" as well). Also email is store-and-forward
> (no end-to-end communication), while HTTP is end-to-end.

It's "easy" to do store-and-forward over HTTP or any
pull protocol with at least nominal post capability.
If you are talking about some server required to
mediate the capability, it is simple enough to have
the user register a mailbox at the server, and poll
it.

Ricardo deals with this by having the public key
registered as the account/mailbox.  Earlier generations
had to poll for updates from the mailbox, and the only
thing in the mailbox was payment receipts.

Current generation uses SDP1 datagrams and the server can
now forward messages into a mailbox directly to a client.
Also, the messages include payment receipts and chat
messages.  I'll probably add invoicing messages next,
but that is at the bottom of a long line.

(Whether Ricardo/SOX is caps is my big open question.
I assume it is, for the most part.)

iang