[cap-talk] Object-Capability Patterns: An Historical Overview

[Jed Donnelley]

On 3/20/2008 3:21 PM, Toby Murray wrote:
> On Thu, 2008-03-20 at 13:20 -0700, Jed Donnelley wrote:
>> On 3/19/2008 3:56 PM, Toby Murray wrote:
>>> On Wed, 2008-03-19 at 15:12 +0000, Toby Murray wrote:
>>>> I'm trying to gather together a list of common object-capability
>>>> patterns that have consistently reappeared in various object-capability
>>>> systems throughout the past few decades. 
>>> A rough first cut is now at
>>> http://wiki.erights.org/wiki/Object-Capability_patterns
>>>
>> Regarding the above patterns page, I think it would be helpful
>> to have a brief, modern, and comparable set of descriptions
>> for each of the patterns noted.
> 
> I was thinking that each pattern might link to its own page in
> wiki.erights.org where a full explanation of it, its history, uses,
> variations and implementations could be covered.

Seems good to me.

>> For example (if I have the terminology right):
>> _____________
>> Membrane: A membrane is a pattern ...
>> _______________
>>
> 
> This is a wiki! Please feel free to post this material straight to the
> wiki without waiting for approval from this list. Anyone who's
> interested can set up an RSS tracker to watch for relevant changes (as I
> do). They'll certainly edit what is posted if they feel an urge to. The
> wiki also includes "talk" pages on which the subtleties of the
> presentation etc. can be discussed perhaps more effectively than on this
> list. By all doing so, hopefully the pages will converge on a consensus
> and we'll get all this material in a useful state.

That's fine.  I just didn't want to spend a lot of time
writing something up in a completely wrong format or
with inappropriate terminology, only to have it
totally disappear in the next rev.  We all have limits
on the time we can spend on such work.  I suppose
poor content does have some value in motivating others
to improve it ...

>> Perhaps it would be helpful to include reference
>> E implementations (collected capability algorithms?)?
> 
> Absolutely. I couldn't agree more.

Sounds like we have a direction.

--Jed  http://www.webstart.com/jed/