Re: Renaming Object Capabilities to Authorization Capabilities?

+0

Painting a naming bikeshed in this area is indeed a huge headache.  But
I agree that ocaps aren't clear to a good swath of users and
"authorization capabilities" may be clearer to many users not familiar
with the lore of what domain they're tackling.

Adam Lake writes:

> +1
>
>
> On 11/3/2018 11:25 AM, Manu Sporny wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> This is related to the OCAP-LD spec that some of us are working on in
>> this community:
>>
>> https://w3c-ccg.github.io/ocap-ld/
>>
>> Digital Bazaar's engagement with customers over the past several months
>> wrt. the term "Object Capabilities" has resulted in confusion around
>> exactly what an Object Capability is.
>>
>> Some history -- the "Object Capabilities" name was originally picked to
>> differentiate from the "Linux Capabilities" stuff, which really didn't
>> have much to do with capabilities (in the authorization sense). Object
>> Capabilities makes more sense when you're talking about programming
>> languages, but we don't really use it in that sense in this community.
>>
>> I propose we name the specification more appropriately in the hope that
>> the name evokes what we're actually doing with the specification. The
>> technology we're developing in this community specifically has to do
>> with Authorization... capability-based authorization. Thus, I'm
>> suggesting the spec is renamed to "Authorization Capabilities"...
>> shortened to "zCaps" for the cool kids in the community.
>>
>> Also, this is a bike shed discussion, so I fully expect it to get out of
>> hand and for us to have to do a poll like we did for the Verifiable
>> Credentials terminology. Please only suggest names that you're committed
>> to using with your customers (or that you would use with non-technical
>> folks). If we get a bunch of +1s with no strong objections, we're
>> done... and yes, I know that's wishful thinking. :)
>>
>> -- manu
>>

Received on Saturday, 3 November 2018 17:15:51 UTC