Previously, I’ve been writing about how to perform task delegation with a distributed authorization scheme. While that article managed to outline the principle well enough, it left a few things not yet covered. The summary was that if we find a generic scheme for treating a resource as a series of changes, then we can encrypt and authenticate each change separately, leading to a kind of distributed authorship of resources – which is what we really want in a distributed system.

In this article, I’ll explore the meaning of key concepts of access control in a distributed system, as well as outline some high-level requirements deriving from that. Following articles can then …

In my previous post, I was discussing how distributed authorization might be facilitated. Today, I want to discuss what effects such authorization tokens can have if we relay them, effectively achieving delegation.

Distributing authorization has the immediate effect that it (mostly) eliminates authorization servers. In practice, there always needs to be a machine to issue such tokens, of course – but it does not have to be consulted for every imaginable action someone takes. As I briefly discussed previously, authorization tokens can last a fairly long time (but should not last infinitely), and we can query for revocations quite carefully.

This attempt to eliminate authorization …

Whenever I don’t write much here, I feel like I’m not producing anything of value. Just to make myself feel better, I want to start with a quick update on what’s been happening.

• I was awarded a grant by the for research into next generation Internet technologies. This, for me, has a few major effects.
• First, it means I could hire some help in doing this R&D work with me. Adrian, my first freelance collaborator, is going to focus on conflict-free replicated data types. How precisely that fits into the Interpeer Project, I will write about later.
• Second, it’s a step forward into doing this full-time, which I wanted to do when I set out to do it. Not immediately, …

There’s something rotten in the state of FOSS, and it’s not the software. It’s the community – or more precisely, the communal spirit.

This post deviates a little from the regular topics. I do not intend to write a lot on this topic here, unless you, dear reader, provide me with feedback that it fits your interest. Consider it an experiment while work continues on implementing the protocol suite as usually discussed here, and there are fewer technical updates to write.

F(L)OSS – What is it?

Many of my readers will be able to skip this section, but I do not want to lose those who can’t. The thing that is commonly described as “Open Source” in …