[cap-talk] "Ambient capability"

[Kevin Reid]

On Jul 13, 2009, at 12:09, Toby Murray wrote:

> My personal preference is that words like "capability" should be used
> on the erights wiki in the precise sense in which they are understood
> within the domain to which the erights wiki pertains -- namely
> (object-)capability-based security.
>
>
>> I think "ambient" in "ambient capability" actually refers to mobile
>> ambients [1], and that dmbarbour is trying to describe ways in  
>> which the
>> local capabilities of migrating code can be either proxied or rebound
>> based on a program-specific policy.
>
> There probably should be some policy discussion regarding the  
> "focus" of
> the erights wiki. Is it focused mostly on:
>
> - E?
> - Object-capability security?
> - Capability-based security?
> - Programming-language-based security?
> etc.
>
> This naturally determines how words like "ambient" and "capability"  
> that
> have different meanings in different disciplines (e.g. capability- 
> based
> security versus programming language theory versus programming  
> language
> security etc.) should be interpreted on that wiki and whose (i.e.  
> which
> community's) definitions should take precedence.

In my opinion, wiki.erights.org should have these topics, in  
decreasing order of relevance:

1. E itself: its principles, specification, and applications.

2. Object-capability systems.

3. Capability systems.

In particular, the wiki-page namespace should be used to fit E itself  
rather than other topics, except for (as in Wikipedia) notes about  
different meanings and disambiguation pages.

Description of different types of capability systems and how  
capabilities fit into security-in-general is definitely on-topic, but  
should not get *priority* in the namespace usage (ontology/taxonomy/ 
terminology) decisions.

-- 
Kevin Reid                                  <http://switchb.org/kpreid/>