"Andreas J. Koenig" wrote:
> I had the imagination that the author would store a policy on PAUSE
> for uploads into his directory, and that the user would store a
> per-author policy for handling downloaded files from CPAN.
>
> If the author would decide in favor of policy "strict", PAUSE would
> not accept uploads that are not signed by exactly that author. I do
> not envision other policies except "strict" and "not strict".
>
> If users would decide for the policy {"GBARR"=>"strict"}, they would
> not let their software install anything by GBARR that is not signed by
> GBARR. Users could have a default policy for all authors except those
> in the per-name policy list. Another policy besides strict would be
> "ask", I suppose. There may be more.
This sounds as confusing as P3P! Why complicate CPAN? Initializing the CPAN module is
already compicted enough for non-Perl users. Certainly some options can have defaults,
but what kind of default do you choose for a security measure?
> A signature by PAUSE is an interesting idea. But it would tell the
> user something different than a signature by a person. While I imagine
> that a sig by GBARR would mean something like: "I have written or at
> least doublechecked the code in this package to be free from malicious
> intent. This is not a warranty." (careful considerations about wording
> pending). A signature of the PAUSE could only mean "These checksums
> were valid at the time of the upload."
Again, my problem with requiring user signatures is that it complicates the module
distribution process. Unless there's a really EASY way for people to acquire a
signature and apply it to their modules, you're going to just increase the attrition in
Perl developers.
Jeremy Wadsack
Wadsack-Allen Digital Group
