I've received lots of feedback to the effect that using the term "Trusted" for an app category does not clearly communicate its purpose, especially relative to "Certified". After discussions with the webapps PM team, Jonas and Anant, I'm proposing that we use the term "Privileged" instead. The consensus is that this is closer to describing the purpose of this app category, while "trusted" (trust in general) is a user action not an application type.
Other names that were discussed but decided against included: "Reviewed" - While technically accurate at this time, this would lock us into a pretty specific (and limited) methodology for validating these types of apps. In the future apps stores could employ different techniques (strong developer authentication and accountability, financial bonds, etc) that would result in equivalent security and privacy properties to a review process. "Signed" - This felt like the tail wagging the dog. We determined the privileges necessary for this category of applications first, then chose code integrity and authentication mechanisms commensurate to those (potential) privileges. It would also once again limit us to potential authentication approaches in the future. Finally, it may be confusing as signing alone generally does not permit additional privileges for desktop applications (outside of OS updates). Yes, it sucks to bikeshed this at this stage of the game, but its better to bite the bullet and make the change now rather than shipping with this terminology. Speaking of bikeshedding, I know there are some strong opinions about the need for a trusted app category, but this probably isn't the thread to reopen that discussion. I'd like to focus on quickly selecting the best term to describe it as currently defined (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Apps/Security). Thanks, Lucas. _______________________________________________ dev-webapps mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-webapps
