Re: [friam] What is a capability?

"Karp, Alan H" <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.comp.capabilities.general
Message-ID <8AD823089998C849A832D86972E69CD5419C6B70@G4W3222.americas.hpqcorp.net>
(Sorry about my earlier reply.  I didn't see that these messages were to both friam and cap-talk.  Thanks, Outlook 2013 and your lousy UI.)

A capability is a "thing" that denotes an object and authorized actions on it.

What that "thing" is depends on the implementation.

In an ocap system, the "thing" is an object reference.

In an Actors system, the "thing" is the Actor address.

In waterken, the "thing" is a webkey.

In OAuth 2 done correctly, the "thing" is an ungessable string of characters.

In Zebra Copy, the "thing" is a SAML authorization assertion.

For my house, the "thing" is the front door key.  (OK, it's a bad analogy.  Deal with it.)

________________________
Alan Karp
Principal Scientist
Enterprise Services, Office of the CTO
Hewlett-Packard Company
1501 Page Mill Road
Palo Alto, CA 94304
1 (650) 386-4568
http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Alan_Karp
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