On Sat, Jun 27, 2020 at 10:03:46PM +0200, Carsten Bormann wrote: > On 2020-06-27, at 09:57, Erik Andersen <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > There certainly is a big difference between the term certification (an act) > > and the term certificate (a data value). Certification implies that the CA > > does some validation before issuing a certificate.
IMHO: In one case you describe the work process (certification) in the other case the work product (certificate). If we can find examples entities that perform certification but do not produce certificates, or vice versa, then it makes sense to me to be very careful which word to use. Otherwise its just a CNAME discussion. > Well, I maybe have a different perception because I???m German: the German > word for the place that certifies that you are allowed to drive a car is > ???Führerscheinstelle??? (*), ???Driving License Office???. Not ???Driving > Licensing Office???. Because the result is what the customer cares about, > not the process. Well... I have seen a lot more obsession about process: ISO9000, process oriented company, constant redefinition of processes, etc. pp. > Then, of course, RFC 5280 gets to define the term for X.509v3, so > ???certification authority??? it is. AFAIK it is much older, ISO/IEC X.509 but likely predating it. > (But, like with URIs and URLs, and TLS and SSL, and many other things, a > different term is then used by the unwashed masses. And, infuriatingly, by > the people that cater to those masses instead of preferring the ground truth > they know.) Here some fun stats i took (copied from other email thread): google: site:cisco.com "certificate authority" -> 59,700 google: site:cisco.com "certification authority" -> 8,580 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_authority grep -il "ertification authorit" rfc*.txt | wc -> 272 (#RFCs) grep -il "ertificate authorit" rfc*.txt | wc -> 136 (#RFCs) grep -il "ertification authorit" rfc8???.txt | wc -> 38 (#RFCs) grep -il "ertificate authorit" rfc8???.txt | wc -> 13 (#RFCs) Cheers Toerless > Grüße, Carsten > > (*) That office might be part of the Fahrerlaubnisbehörde, but I digress. > Same thing. > > _______________________________________________ > Anima mailing list > [email protected] > https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/anima _______________________________________________ Anima mailing list [email protected] https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/anima
