Re: [OAUTH-WG] Autonomous clients and resource owners (editorial)

["Foiles, Doug" <[e-mail]>]

I have a bit of confusion on the Autonomous Client Flows … and specifically related to Eve’s comment below that suggests to me that the autonomous client is NOT ALWAYS the resource owner.

 

Can the Autonomous Client Flows support clients that ARE NOT the actual resource owner?  For example for an Assertion Flow where the Subject of the SAML assertion is a user identity (and the resource owner) and not that of the client.

 

Is the intent of the Client Credentials Flow to support something like Google’s “OAuth for Google Apps domains” 2 Legged OAuth use case?  http://code.google.com/apis/accounts/docs/OAuth.html.

 

If the Autonomous Client Flows support clients that can act on behalf a resource owner that is not themselves  … it then seems the resource owner must provide some level of consent outside the OAuth specific flow. 

 

Thanks.

 

Doug

 

From: [e-mail] [mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of Eve Maler
Sent: Friday, April 23, 2010 7:21 AM
To: OAuth WG
Subject: [OAUTH-WG] Autonomous clients and resource owners (editorial)

 

Regarding the second comment I made below: I realized last night that Sections 3.7.1 and 3.7.2 get this more correct, by saying that an autonomous client represents a "separate resource owner". So Section 2.2 definitely needs a slight change, from:

 

"...and autonomous flows where the client is acting for itself (the client is also the resource owner)."

 

to something like:

 

"...and autonomous flows where the client is acting on behalf of a different resource owner."

 

Thanks,

 

            Eve

 

On 21 Apr 2010, at 4:43 PM, Eve Maler wrote:





Tacking this response to the end of the thread for lack of a better place to do it: The name "username" seems not quite apt in the case of an autonomous client that isn't representing an end-user. Would "identifier" be better? (Actually, it sort of reminds me of SAML's "SessionIndex"...) Or would the parameter be reserved for user-delegation flows?

 

Speaking of autonomous clients, Section 2.2 -- among possibly other places -- states that an autonomous client is also the resource owner, but that's not always the case, is it? The client might be seeking access on behalf of itself. (FWIW, I made roughly this same comment on David's first draft on March 21, and he agreed with my suggested fix at the time.)

 

            Eve

 


Eve Maler

[e-mail]

http://www.xmlgrrl.com/blog