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Re: [sasl] MOGGIES Proposed Charter

Nicolas Williams <Nicolas.Williams@oracle.com> Mon, 24 May 2010 04:37 UTC

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Date: Sun, 23 May 2010 23:36:55 -0500
From: Nicolas Williams <Nicolas.Williams@oracle.com>
To: Arnt Gulbrandsen <arnt@gulbrandsen.priv.no>
Subject: Re: [sasl] MOGGIES Proposed Charter
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On Sat, May 22, 2010 at 11:22:32AM +0200, Arnt Gulbrandsen wrote:
> Nicolas Williams writes:
> >Let me refine my problem with numeric measures of cryptographic
> >strength in APIs. There are two. First, what's better in a UI (I'm
> >betting API particulars will leak into UIs)?
> 
> As (mostly former) UI-head: Numbers are better than magic constants.
> Magic constants have a way of getting into a fight with UI
> translation.
> 
> There are good ways to handle magic constants, but errare humanum
> est, programmers are human, and my impression is that magic
> constants are associated with more UI snafus than numbers.

These wouldn't be constants though -- that's part of the point.

> >Second, do we want to encourage users and/or developers to make
> >relative cipher suite strength comparisons?
> 
> Other than "Pick the best?"

One could certainly have locally defined preference orders for cipher
suites.  Numeric sorting by "strength number" needn't enter into it.

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