Re: Principal term choice - Was: Re: Identity interoperability

On 11/19/12 3:55 PM, Olivier Berger wrote:
> Hi.
>
> Henry Story <henry.story@bblfish.net> writes:
>
>> I have defined Principal much more carefully here
>> http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/webid/wiki/Identity_Interoperability#logical_relationships_of_principals
>>
> Maybe it's just my poor knowledge of the english language... but could
> you point me to a reference definition of "Principal" that would apply
> here, for instance in http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/principal ?
>
> Just for the sake of clarity, I guess we should prefer common language
> terms as much as possible...
>
> Or maybe it's just me ?
>
> Kind regards,
It isn't just you, I remain uncomfortable with 'Principal' based on the 
fact that it doesn't match usage elsewhere. I've commented on this in 
previous posts.

Read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal_(computer_security) . It 
states:

"Principals can be individual people, computers, services, computational 
entities such as processes and threads, or any group of such things.[1] 
They need to be identified and authenticated before they can be assigned 
rights and privileges over resources in the network. A principal 
typically has an associated identifier (such as a Security Identifier) 
that allows it to be referenced for identification or assignment of 
properties and permissions."

Are we not trying to describe the same thing re. WebID, but via the use 
of Hyperlinks of type: HTTP URI, re denotation mechanism?



-- 

Regards,

Kingsley Idehen	
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OpenLink Software
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