Re: [GNAP] Terminology

[Mike Jones <[e-mail]>]

One of the things that people hated about OAuth was it invented new terminology that wasn’t in common use.  But for better or for worse, the terms Client, Authorization Server, and Protected Resource are now widely understood.

Let’s not make people similarly hate GNAP by inventing even more novel terms, when existing terms will fit the bill.  Client wasn’t a perfect choice but adding “Orchestrator” to the vocabulary menagerie would definitely make things worse.

                                                       -- Mike

From: TXAuth <[e-mail]> On Behalf Of Tom Jones
Sent: Tuesday, August 11, 2020 8:44 AM
To: Dave Tonge <[e-mail]>
Cc: Francis Pouatcha <[e-mail]>; Justin Richer <[e-mail]>; Dick Hardt <[e-mail]>; Benjamin Kaduk <[e-mail]>; Fabien Imbault <[e-mail]>; Denis <[e-mail]>; [e-mail]
Subject: Re: [GNAP] Terminology

the term "orchestator" does not match any use case i have.
Let's be clear that there are four entities to a single transaction in the real world sense of things. (and others that support the  transaction.)
Then we can focus on the end point roles. I will focus on the data privacy issues, API's have the same parties with different terminology.
1. the subject of the data to be transferred.
2. the user of a grant from the subject to act as delegate. (see https://wiki.idesg.org/wiki/index.php/Delegation for how to enable the user)
3. the site that has a repository of user data with legal obligations to protect that data (the GDPR) (role resource server.)
4 the site that wants either access to the data, or some privacy preserving statement about the existence and content of the data. (role of client, vendor, PISP, etc.)
5. some sorts of facilitator sites for allowing access (roles like authenticator, idp, verifier, csp, RA, etc etc. etc. ) these have been left out of OAUTH for good reason.

This is a note supporting the separation of roles from legal entities.  BTW, I firmly believe that the legal entity also needs to be ID'd by the transaction.
Peace ..tom


On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 1:42 AM Dave Tonge <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
Hi all

I agree that "client" can be confusing. I would be in support of alternative terminology.
We can always have some wording that explains that an "Orchestrator" in GNAP plays a similar role to "Client" in OAuth.

Dave

On Tue, 11 Aug 2020 at 07:52, Fabien Imbault <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
Hi Francis,

I like your proposal, seems much more intuitive.

Fabien

Le mar. 11 août 2020 à 04:17, Francis Pouatcha <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>> a écrit :
Hello Denis, Justin, Dick, Fabien,

In this post (https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/txauth/IaSLC_72_KimjOBJqdmQY-JOGNw/) i suggested we use the word "Orchestrator" to designate the piece of software that orchestrate interaction between "Requestor" (a.k.a. User), AS and RS to obtain the protected resource.

We are turning around the same topic. As soon as we go beyond the original oAuth protocol, the word 'Client' becomes confusing.

In the same response, I suggest we talk about "roles" and not "entities".

Best regards.
/Francis

On Thu, Aug 6, 2020 at 6:36 PM Dick Hardt <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
I still think that client was the right name in OAuth 2, as the client wanted to do a client-server interaction, so the client used OAuth 2 to get an access token to interact with the "server".

I do agree that it is not the best term in GNAP. Primarily because GNAP is a combination of the client from OAuth 2, and the relying party from OIDC.

/Dick
ᐧ

On Thu, Aug 6, 2020 at 12:50 PM Justin Richer <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
On Aug 6, 2020, at 12:53 PM, Dick Hardt <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:

The term client in OAuth came from the computer science definition of client-server interaction.

This, I would argue, is exactly why it’s a bad label for something that’s distinctly more specific in this context, and I would love to see GNAP adopt a more specific label for the role that we traditionally called “client” in OAuth.

 — Justin



The client is getting an access token so it can call a server, specifically, a resource server (to differentiate it from the authorization server).

The confusion in my experience usually stems from people working with software that is acting in multiple roles. IE, the software that is acting as a client in once context, is also acting as an RS in other contexts, or even acting as an AS. The other confusion is that people view clients as being the software the user is using -- although it may not be acting as a client in the oauth context.



ᐧ

On Thu, Aug 6, 2020 at 4:49 AM Fabien Imbault <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
Hi,

To me, client has always been a strange word in the context of OAuth, as it has a meaning well defined both in everyday life (this client is a good customer) and in computer science (client-server interaction). Thus I always have to make the mental translation to the OAuth world before any discussion... And any teaching experience shows that it does make the concepts hard to grasp for a majority of (clever) people.

As for the RO, previous discussions suggested Resource Controller (RC) also, which may be a bit more specific than manager.

Fabien

On Thu, Aug 6, 2020 at 1:00 PM Denis <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
Justin and Dick,

[Was:  "Revisiting the photo sharing example (a driving use case for the creation of OAuth)"]

So let us attempt to define new terms:
initiating application (IA): application by means of which a user initiates interactions with RS(s) and AS(s)
In the same way, we should get rid of the term Resource Owner (RO), which is currently defined as:
Resource Owner (RO): entity capable of granting access to a protected resource
I propose to replace it with Resource Manager (RM):
Resource Manager (RM) : application or user that manages an access decision function of a Resource Server
Denis

I agree with Justin. Redefining well used terms will lead to significant confusion. If we have a different role than what we have had in the past, then that role should have a name not being used already in OAuth or OIDC.

Given what we have learned, and my own experience explaining what a Client is, and is not, improving the definition for Client could prove useful. I am not suggesting the term be redefined, but clarified.

For example, clarifying that a Client is a role an entity plays in the protocol, and that the same entity may play other roles at other times, or some other language to help differentiate between "role" and "entity".

/Dick
ᐧ

On Wed, Aug 5, 2020 at 8:20 AM Justin Richer <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
I’m in favor of coming up with a new term that’s a better fit, but I’m not really in favor of taking an existing term and applying a completely new definition to it. In other words, I would sooner stop using “client” and come up with a new, more specific and accurate term for the role than to define “client” as meaning something completely different. We did this in going from OAuth 1 to OAuth 2 already, moving from the even-more-confusing “consumer” to “client”, but OAuth 2 doesn’t use the term “consumer” at all, nor does it use “server” on its own but instead always qualifies it with “Authorization Server” and “Resource Server”.

GNAP can do something similar, in my opinion. But what we can’t do is ignore the fact that GNAP is going to be coming up in a world that is already permeated  by OAuth 2 and its terminology. We don’t have a blank slate to work with, but neither are we bound to use the same terms and constructs as before. It’s going to be a delicate balance!

 — Justin


On Aug 4, 2020, at 3:32 PM, Warren Parad <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:

I think that is fundamentally part of the question:
We are clear that we are producing a protocol that is
conceptually (if not more strongly) related to OAuth 2.0, and reusing terms
from OAuth 2.0 but with different definitions may lead to unnecessary
confusion

If we say that this document assumes OAuth2.0 terminology, then we should not change the meanings of any definition. If we are saying this supersedes or replaces what OAuth 2.0 creates, then we should pick the best word for the job and ignore conflicting meanings from OAuth 2.0. I have a lot of first hand experience of industries "ruining words", and attempting to side-step the problem rather than redefining the word just confuses everyone as everyone forgets the original meaning as new documents come out, but the confusion with the use of a non-obvious word continues.

Food for thought.
- Warren

[https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/DNiDx1QGIrSqMPKDN1oKevxYuyVRXsqhXdfZOsW56Rf2A74mUKbAPtrJSNw4qynkSjoltWkPYdBhaZJg1BO45YOc1xs6r9KJ1fYsNHogY-nh6hjuIm9GCeBRRzrSc8kWcUSNtuA]
Warren Parad
Founder, CTO
Secure your user data and complete your authorization architecture. Implement Authress<https://bit.ly/37SSO1p>.


On Tue, Aug 4, 2020 at 8:53 PM Benjamin Kaduk <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
Hi Denis,

On Tue, Aug 04, 2020 at 11:31:34AM +0200, Denis wrote:
> Hi Justin,
>
> Since you replied in parallel, I will make a response similar to the one
> I sent to Dick.
>
> > Hi Denis,
> >
> > I think there’s still a problem with the terminology in use here. What
> > you describe as RS2, which might in fact be an RS unto itself, is a
> > “Client” in OAuth parlance because it is /a client of RS1/. What you
> > call a “client” has no analogue in the OAuth world, but it is not at
> > all the same as an OAuth client. I appreciate your mapping of the
> > entities below, but it makes it difficult to hold a discussion if we
> > aren’t using the same terms.
> >
> > The good news is that this isn’t OAuth, and as a new WG we can define
> > our own terms. The bad news is that this is really hard to do.
> >
> > In GNAP, we shouldn’t just re-use existing terms with new definitions,
> > but we’ve got a chance to be more precise with how we define things.
>
> In the ISO context, each document must define its own terminology. The
> boiler plate for RFCs does not mandate a terminology or definitions section
> but does not prevent it either. The vocabulary is limited and as long as
> we clearly define what our terms are meaning, we can re-use a term already
> used in another RFC. This is also the ISO approach.

Just because we can do something does not necessarily mean that it is a
good idea to do so.  We are clear that we are producing a protocol that is
conceptually (if not more strongly) related to OAuth 2.0, and reusing terms
from OAuth 2.0 but with different definitions may lead to unnecessary
confusion.  If I understand correctly, a similar reasoning prompted Dick to
use the term "GS" in XAuth, picking a name that was not already used in
OAuth 2.0.

-Ben

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