Re: BIKESHED: Rename "Powerful features"?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but from recent discussions it sounded like the normative focus is more likely to be the "is X a secure context" section than the "is Y powerful" section. So if people think the word "powerful" is too radicalizing/distracting, maybe a reasonable title would be "Requirements for security-sensitive features" or "Security requirements for privileged features".




On Wednesday, February 18, 2015 7:22 AM, Mike West <mkwst@google.com> wrote:



Brian, Crispin, and Mark have all expressed various degrees of displeasure with the "powerful features" name, arguing that it invites debate about the word "powerful" rather than the content of the spec (I'm paraphrasing: see https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webappsec/2015Feb/0304.html for a more detailed description).

Mark suggested "HTTP-unsafe" to get the conversation started. I'm not a huge fan of that formulation, as it seems equally question-begging.

If the normative focus of the specification is going to be the details in https://w3c.github.io/webappsec/specs/powerfulfeatures/#algorithms, and not the discussion in https://w3c.github.io/webappsec/specs/powerfulfeatures/#is-feature-powerful, then renaming the spec "Sufficiently Secure Contexts" might make sense. We could then drop the term "powerful" entirely in https://w3c.github.io/webappsec/specs/powerfulfeatures/#is-feature-powerful, and land on the verbose-but-tautologically-correct "Features which are only available in sufficiently secure contexts"?


WDYT?

--
Mike West <mkwst@google.com>, @mikewest


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Received on Wednesday, 18 February 2015 17:13:46 UTC