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

[Karp, Alan H]

Rob Meijer wrote:
> 
> A Static authority (as in static authority carrying variables in OO)
> B Authority through ambient available proxies.
> C Authority through designating proxy permission to a proxy with
>   ambient authority.
> 
> These border cases are outside of the first concern of  Dean & Marks
> findings, but are absolutely of the biggest importance when trying to
> arrive at a definition that can be used without high probability of
> misunderstanding. If I interpret ambient authority as I currently do to
> include A and B but not C, and Allan interprets it to not include A or B,
> but to include C, than we are very likely not to be able to come to a
> definition of ambient authority that we both agree on, even if we agree on
> what ambient authority means in the original settings for what it was
> first described as a concept.

Actually, I exclude all three.  I would favor A, but the OO analogy implies that a permission is designated when used.  The fact that any object can reference a static variable doesn't seem relevant.  Without the analogy, you need to define "static authority."  I exclude B and C because you don't need proxies to have ambient authorities.  (Remember, a permission is an authority.)

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Alan Karp
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Virus Safe Computing Initiative
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