[cap-talk] Deep attenuation - "heritage"?

[Jed Donnelley]

----- Original Message -----
From: David Hopwood <david.hopwood at industrial-designers.co.uk>
Date: Tuesday, August 14, 2007 6:26 am
Subject: Re: [cap-talk] Deep attenuation - "heritage"?
To: "General discussions concerning capability systems." <cap-talk at mail.eros-os.org>

...
> >> What about "heritage"?  This is one word and it seems to
> >> me could serve as I think it would be unlikely to be confused
> >> with "inheritance".
> >>
> >> Not a big deal to me, but I thought it was worth one more try.
> 
> I frankly have no idea what metaphors are intended to be invoked by
> "heritage", "strain", etc. If "deep" suggests that the attenuation
> applies recursively to elements of an object structure, that's 
> precisely the intent.
> 
> Please let's not make inferior choices of terminology out of fear of
> "sounding academic".

My hope was to find something that would be understandable
to the most people.  I'd very much like the Web access control
mechanism available from CapDoc to be usable by anybody
who uses the Web - i.e. nearly everybody.  I believe this
'deep attenuation' mechanism will be needed for many
common sharing mechanisms between people, so I think
the term we use for it is important.

I take the above two paragraphs as continuing support
for 'deep attenuation'.  I'll stick with that name unless I
hear support from some others for an alternative.

--JED  http://www.nersc.gov/~jed/