Re: FW: ACTION-660: Input to BP2, on Security and Privacy

I think I disagree quite a bit then, and if I'm the only one, that's
OK. I feel strongly that we are not here to write a position paper on
modern mobile thinking. We're here as part of the *Mobile* *Web*
Initiative, *Best Practices* working group. MIDlets -- unless they're
a browser -- are plainly not in scope, in my view. Widgets of the
future are not in scope, unless they happen to be acting like a user
agent for web content. The Web is in bounds, meaning XHTML, CSS,
Javascript, RSS, and company. Actual practice is in scope;
generalities are not. Things in more than trivial use today are in
bounds, things like DCCI don't seem to be at this point.

We agree that we're not here to state the obvious, that security is
important in mobile, or that one should be generally thinking about
user privacy, and leave it up to the reader as an exercise to figure
out what it means in particular technologies. It is useful to write
about how, specifically, these issues intersect Web access from mobile
devices today, and how specifically people are using Web technologies
correctly to address them. Whatever does not pass that test, should
not be in BP2.

I sure don't think it's bad if you want to write a document on all
these interesting topics; I don't want to write it, not within the
BPWG. I just do not think this is what BP2 is supposed to be, or
within the charter. I can only refer you to BP1 to illustrate the
intent as I understand it, and that does not seem to be where you're
heading.

I'm happy to defer if there are more voices supporting this seemingly
large change of direction. Or, I could be well convinced if someone
could start writing some BPs in the spirit of BP1 to illustrate what
BP2 will be.

On Fri, Feb 15, 2008 at 3:07 AM, Sullivan, Bryan <BS3131@att.com> wrote:
>  Everything I have proposed is current technology; again, because one
>  type of user agent implementation environment doesn't support a current
>  feature of another environment, is no reason to avoid discussing the
>  implications of the more advanced environment. But overall the
>  objectives are not to focus on the specifics of APIs, environments, or
>  even user-agent types. The objective is to define proper behavior of any
>  web-technology based user agent in general, but focused at core on the
>  browsing service "model" which of course is not limited to "web
>  browsers". I can browse RSS feeds (or maps) just as usefully as web
>  pages, using the same basic web technologies. We need to address the
>  issues in commmon to those various types of web applications.

Received on Friday, 15 February 2008 10:44:21 UTC