Re: [webvr] Chrome WebVR avaliable only on secure origins

Right, with all clarifications in place, I think it's time to go with my
personal opinion.

I find the limitations of APIs such as the full screen mode, webrtc and
WebVR worrying.

It puts limitations on sharing and embedding across different content and
ignores the fact that a lot of necessary work to get encrypted traffic for
everybody without the hassle that it still is.

It's great to see that services like Let's Encrypt and Github Pages, Zeit,
Cloudflare working towards that, but it's not the open web we want.

I still wonder what the benefits are (and my attempt to assume arguments
for the proponents have been demonstrated to be inconsistent).

On the other hand: The issue of HTTPS everywhere is more than just WebVR,
thanks to HTTP/2 being SSL only.

I wonder where all this will go, but I doubt WebVR needs to enforce this.

Cheers 🍻
Am 13.07.2016 4:08 nachm. schrieb "Jaakko Manninen" <jaakko@vizor.io>:

> I agree that requiring SSL will undemocratise WebVR because getting SSL
> can be quite a challenge and incurs a cost. That's not the open web
> anymore.
>
> I'm also worried about embedding, an important use case for Vizor.io is to
> be able to embed your production into any web page.
>
> Overall I think this change is too prohibitive and not necessary to begin
> with - IMHO adequate security provisions like CORS are already in place.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Jaakko
>
> On Wed, Jul 13, 2016 at 2:23 PM, Sean McBeth <sean.mcbeth@primrosevr.com>
> wrote:
>
>> On LetsEncrypt: the Windows/IIS story is effectively non-existent. I
>> don't think it is very good to be suggesting a "solution" that effectively
>> dictates a platform.
>>
>> I know Windows isn't popular, and in a perfect world I'd certainly like
>> to be off of it, but Oculus and Valve have restricted the HMDs, under some
>> post-hoc rationalization that Apple and X.org have hobbled the OSes. For
>> once, it's *not* Microsoft's fault I'm stuck on Windows.
>> On Jul 13, 2016 7:07 AM, "Florian Bösch" <pyalot@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> If TLS would fulfill the following criteria I would not object in any
>>> way to its promotion of use for everything.
>>>
>>>    1. Free for any scope and use
>>>    2. Censorship resistant
>>>    3. Surveillance resistant
>>>    4. Fast (as in not significantly slower for all use-cases)
>>>    5. Decentralized
>>>    6. Easy to deploy
>>>    7. Not jurisdiction bound (no US-based root CA, no US-based "free"
>>>    providers)
>>>    8. Included with every domain (including every subdomain, or any
>>>    domain (wildcard))
>>>    9. Implementations where straightforward, bug-resistant, minimal and
>>>    easy to integrate, available in a variety of languages and environments
>>>    10. The protocol wasn't a completely lost cause of legacy gunk
>>>    11. It was so well engineered that even homegrown implementations of
>>>    it would be easy to get right
>>>    12. It would not impose various restrictions on the use of networks,
>>>    that present a restriction of how networks used to be used
>>>
>>> TLS is so far away from all of this, that I find it fundamentally
>>> objectionable to promote its use universally. If you want to use TLS as it
>>> exists, fine. Enforcing it on everybody: principled absolute nono.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jul 13, 2016 at 12:46 PM, Chris Van Wiemeersch <cvan@mozilla.com
>>> > wrote:
>>>
>>>> Not to dispute the very legitimate points addressed in the past few
>>>> threads, just FYI it's possible to start Chrome and Firefox such that a
>>>> local web server is not needed (for three.js/A-Frame/WebVR development, for
>>>> example):
>>>> https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js/wiki/How-to-run-things-locally#content-loaded-from-external-files
>>>>
>>>> I try to link to that page in project READMEs and documentation. Just
>>>> trying to spread the knowledge, but obviously I'm not dismissing the other
>>>> points.
>>>>
>>>> The same-origin policy is a hassle, yes. It's also the sandbox that
>>>> enables folks to load a web page and not be afraid of getting a virus.
>>>> FWIW, IME, most (non-super-technical) folks I've encountered understand
>>>> this. And they're the same folks who get scared when they see contextless
>>>> permission prompts and blindly accept them because… all my friends use
>>>> Whatsapp or Snapchat. Again, not an excuse. It's just the landscape today.
>>>>
>>>> For folks interested, Anne van Kesteren (standards guru at Mozilla) has
>>>> written quite a few good pieces on his blog about these very topics. Though
>>>> he's advocated for the same-origin policy (for the aforementioned reasons),
>>>> he is also critical of its hinderance to web development (and consumption
>>>> of web pages): https://annevankesteren.nl/2016/07/web-computing
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Jul 13, 2016 at 3:36 AM, Sean McBeth <
>>>> sean.mcbeth@primrosevr.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> It comes to my attention that the issue with XmlHTTPRequest is not to
>>>>> do with secure origins, but same-origin policy. So I also have to keep
>>>>> track of multiple ways in which my page may not work, for no other reason
>>>>> than "browser refuses to do what is syntactically correct". It's a serious
>>>>> barrier to adoption for new developers.
>>>>> On Jul 13, 2016 6:29 AM, "Sean McBeth" <sean.mcbeth@primrosevr.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Jul 13, 2016 6:04 AM, "Martin Splitt" <mr.avgp@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> > >> We welcome feedback, especially if this policy makes your
>>>>>> planned use case infeasible!
>>>>>> > >
>>>>>> > > TLS makes all kinds of things infeasible.
>>>>>> >
>>>>>> > Can you give a example?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> For one thing, your own file system is not considered a secure
>>>>>> origin. I've ran into lots of people trying to get into WebVR that just
>>>>>> don't understand what that means. They see a page, they see they can link
>>>>>> to images on that page, they can double click on that file and see the
>>>>>> results. It never occurs to then that they need to run a local web server.
>>>>>> If they don't already know what that means, it's nearly impossible to
>>>>>> explain the indirection. Why do they need a web server when the file is
>>>>>> right there?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I know several more people who have no idea how to setup a
>>>>>> self-signed certificate on their machine to be able to test features on
>>>>>> their own networks. OpenSSL is not that easy to install on Windows. A
>>>>>> similar fiat decision was made for WebRTC. I eventually just copied the
>>>>>> certs off of my production site and live with the cert warnings. S terrible
>>>>>> solution to a stupid problem.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Frankly, I've been a web dev for 20 years and it feels rather
>>>>>> ridiculous that web dev is harder, more cumbersome *today*. I don't even
>>>>>> get why disabling XmlHTTPRequest was necessary, rather than restricting it
>>>>>> to the parent directory of the page.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I agree with Florian. It's on Google to provide tools, not dictate
>>>>>> how they are used.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>
>
> --
> Jaakko Manninen
> CTO, Vizor.io
> +358-44-989-1619
> @Vizor_VR / @kschzt
>