Re: Request to make one proposal for execution model and security model

On Mon, Jan 28, 2013 at 4:18 PM, Wonsuk Lee <wonsuk11.lee@samsung.com> wrote:
> Hi. Colleagues.
>
> So far we had three proposals[1][2][3] for execution model and security
> model from Oxford, Mozilla and Samsung electronics. Conceptually large parts
> of Mozilla and Samsung’s proposals are overlapped, so I would like to ask
> the editors of these proposals to merge as a one proposal.

Comparing the Samsung and Mozilla specifications, the main differences
seem to be:

* The Samsung specification doesn't define a delivery format, but
rather leaves that up to other specifications.
* The APIs for installing/uninstalling/updating apps are different.
The feature set of the Mozilla API appears to be a superset of the
feature set of the Samsung API. For example it supports more
fine-grained control over updates.
* The Samsung API for Application objects supports managing
application visibility and has a few more events for application life
cycle (launch/pause/resume).
* The Mozilla API for Application objects has more support for
delivery format integration, for example though the manifest property.
* The security model in both drafts are very vaguely defined :-)
Especially defining the details around signing is missing from both
specifications.
* The Mozilla specification contains System Messages.
* The Samsung specification contains service pages (which I've yet to
fully read up on, but they seem to serve a similar goal to system
messages)

While I think we could use write the delivery format as a separate
specification, I think we need to have a defined delivery format. Both
because having an interoperable delivery format is required in order
to have interoperable implementations, and because the different
delivery formats have different capabilities and so affects what
features we design for the runtime. For example, only the Mozilla
delivery formats support system messages, and so it doesn't make sense
to define system messages in the runtime if the delivery format
doesn't support them.

So I'm happy to explore breaking out the delivery mechanism out of the
runtime spec, but only once we have an agreed upon delivery mechanism
and published working draft for it.


Would it be acceptable to you to add the features from the Samsung
specification that are missing in the Mozilla specification and use
that as basis for FPWD? In particular we'd need to add:

* Events for application life cycle. These would likely have to be
added to the ApplicationManagement interface in the mozilla draft
since the Application object is accessible to other sites than the
application itself.
* API for managing showing/hiding an application.

This would leave figuring out service pages vs. system messages, but
that might not need to hold up the FPWD? I think Google has something
similar to service pages too in their runtime so it's something I'm
happy to look into more.

> In addition, concerning to security model, we had proposal from John Lyle of
> Oxford. So I think it would be great if this is harmonized with security
> part of merged one. What do you think?

The document from John Lyle seems more like a requirements document,
than an actual specification for a security model. So I think it's
fine to keep as a separate document that we can develop separately and
use to evaluate the security model of the various drafts for the
security model as we go.

/ Jonas

Received on Tuesday, 29 January 2013 10:30:18 UTC