RE: Webdav issue: UNLOCK_BY_NON_LOCK_OWNERS

Hey WebDAV'ers,
   A couple of the disagreeing parties (JimW, GeoffC, LisaD) put there
heads together to come up with a compromise on the issue of allowing
non-lock owners to UNLOCK a resouce.  The compromise is that the following
items should be said in the spec.

- A server MAY allow principals other than a lock owner to unlock a
resource
-  If a server supports the unlocking of a resource by someone other than
the lock owner, this capability SHOULD be under access control.
- There is a tradeoff in allowing non-owners of a lock to unlock a
resource.  It can be beneficial to allow non-lock owners to perform UNLOCK
requests because it allows the adminstrator of the server to configure the
server to grant longer lock timeouts because the administrator knows that
there is a process in place to allow users to deal with forgotten locks
left by other users.  On the other hand, a disadvantage of unlocking
someone else's lock is that can create a situation where two users are
working on modifications to the same resource at the same time which can
result in a client having to perform an merge that wasn't previously
planned.

If we have a consensus around this, the wording that we will use will be
very close to this.   If you have any comments on the position or wording,
please speak up.

J.

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Phone: 914-784-7569,   ccjason@us.ibm.com

Received on Wednesday, 5 September 2001 11:02:11 UTC