[cap-talk] "ambient authority" on wiki.erights.org

[David-Sarah Hopwood]

Rob Meijer wrote:
> On Mon, June 15, 2009 09:09, David Wagner wrote:
>> Rob Meijer wrote:
>>> there are actually four possibilities for what ambient authority would
>>> include:
[...]
>> It sounds like you are starting from the phrase and trying to come up
>> with a definition of that phrase, trying to decide which definition
>> seems like it goes best with that phrase.  I'd argue you should be
>> starting from the concept, since that's the important thing.  The words
>> "ambient authority" are not of any particular interest in themselves,
>> apart from the concept/pattern that Dean & Mark identified as important.

I agree completely.

>> If you want to argue that this concept should go under a different name,
>> well, you're free to.  Personally I think it's a bit late for that at
>> this point, but you're free to disagree.  But, does it really matter?
>> A phrase like "ambient authority" isn't going to make any sense to anyone
>> outside our community until it is explained, anyway, so why does it matter
>> which mysterious phrase we use for this unfamiliar but important concept?
>> I'd say "ambient permission" is just as mysterious.
> 
> I don't want to argue that the concept that Dean & Mark identified should
> go under an other name. I argue that we should not use a to narrow
> definition of this concept that is misaligned with the linguistic
> decomposition of the term, while the concept can just as well be defined
> in a way that is aligned with the decomposition of the term.
> 
> I have always interpreted "ambient authority" in that broad sense, that
> includes but is not defined by the narrow sense that David & Allan
> interpret it to mean.
> 
> From this interpretation I have, when doing presentations on POLP/POLA,
> used OO languages use of static (authority carrying) variables as an
> example of ambient authority at the programming language level of
> granularity.

It is: the request that obtains the reference from a static variable that
holds it, is an ambient request. Subsequent requests that use the reference
may not be ambient.

Such languages are hybrid capability / ambient authority systems, so there
is no contradiction here.

-- 
David-Sarah Hopwood  ⚥  http://davidsarah.livejournal.com