Greetings all,

 

It would be good to capture these in any produced SPDX document.  I'm
thinking adding the user doing the creation as an additional creator would
be appropriate, but there is also a good argument for adding them as a
reviewer.

 

In terms of feedback on the different approaches, I am thinking a
"wiki-like" approach in #1 would best match the openness of the site and
allow anyone with somewhat validated credentials to update the information.
It is also the simplest to implement.

 

In terms of security and authenticating the user, I don't see too much
difference between the 3.  If you want to have stronger security, I would
recommend supporting some form of public key signing.  Most development
oriented systems use SSH public keys for this purpose (see Git's use of
public keys
<http://git-scm.com/book/en/Git-on-the-Server-Generating-Your-SSH-Public-Key
> ).  Being more secure, it is also more cumbersome for the user, so unless
you think it is critical to authenticate the user, I would suggest the
simpler approach.  Github, for example, requires stronger authenticate for
commits, but allows a weaker authentication for most other activities.

 

Gary

 

From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Matt Germonprez
Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2014 6:07 AM
To: Jeremiah Foster
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Questions/Concerns about online verification of SPDX Documents.

 

We would edit an SPDX for primarily two things: 

 

- Adding document/package/file comments

- Documenting a Concluded License. 

 

Right now, with any of our scanners that we use (FOSSology and Ninka), we
put NOASSERTION in every Concluded License field. We put the results of what
the scanners found in Declared License.

 

Maybe 'authenticity' isn't the right word. It is more to document the
meta-data associated with the SPDX document and its edits. Tracking who has
edited and concluded what. 

 

Regards,
Matt

 

 

On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 6:44 AM, Jeremiah Foster
<[email protected]> wrote:

 

 

On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 11:52 AM, Matt Germonprez <[email protected]>
wrote:

Hi Jeremiah, 

 

The ideas behind this are: 

 

1) Creation of an SPDX dashboard similar to: 

 

http://spdxhub.ist.unomaha.edu/dashboard

 

Cool. I can see having signed SPDX docs that I can compare as a very nice
feature of a dashboard. 

 

that will display SPDX docs. We are adding functionality that will allow for
the editing of SPDX documents, comparison of SPDX docs (between different
versions of the same package), the 'sign off' of SPDX docs by people. 

 

Why would you edit a SPDX document? Isn't it meant as a machine-readable BoM
that is automatically generated on the target? 

 

2) More specific to this question, once an SPDX docs is created following a
FOSSology or Ninka scan, it can be further edited via the dashboard and
signed-off by a person or a series of people as a measure of SPDX document
authenticity. 

 

How does the signed-off by act as a measure of document authenticity? If I
can edit the document online it has lost its authenticity of 1-to-1
correspondence with the target. If I need to ensure the integrity of a given
target, now I need to trust every editor of the document as well as the
document generation process itself. Its easier for me to just check the
target with an existing tool and not use SPDX which needs additional
verification.

 

Are you enabling the ability to add meta-data in the form of a signature
only? In which case the underlying SPDX document does not get changed?

 

Regards,

 

Jeremiah

 

Regards,
Matt

 

 

On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 3:26 AM, Jeremiah Foster
<[email protected]> wrote:

 

 

On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 7:21 AM, ajay medury <[email protected]>
wrote:

Hello,

 

My name is Ajay Medury, and I am student taking Prof. Germonprez's class on
Open Source Tool Development. My team and I have been working on getting the
SPDX Dashboard up and running and have run into some issues when considering
the online verification (signing) of SPDX documents.

 

I don't understand the use case. What do you mean with "online
verification"? Do you mean someone logging into a web site with OAUTH? And
what do you mean with "signing"? Are you talking about signing with a
cryptographic key? 

 

Overall I don't really understand where you're going with this. Doesn't the
BoM need to be generated from the actual hardware target? Otherwise, how do
you know it comes from the target? What evidence do you provide that the
generated BoM corresponds in a 1 to 1 fashion with the built binary target?

 

In Debian for example you can use debsums which has a cryptographically
secure hash sum generated on the binary package which corresponds 1 to 1
with the source package. The source package holds the BoM which is also
signed with a strong cryptographic key and hash summed. In the source
package is the pristine source code for the binary as well as the BoM which
denotes copyright and license for any and all corresponding artifacts. This
is the chain of causality if you will and can be displayed on the web, but
changing the BoM changes the hash sum and compromises integrity. 

 

What is the process for the SPDX dashboard? Does it aim to allow one to
generate a BoM from a package online?

 

Cheers,

 

Jeremiah

 

 

 

We were hoping to get the community's help on this matter as we have
discussed three possible alternatives on solving this issue. They are listed
below:

 

1.      Allowing anyone to signoff (verify) an SPDX document after they
enter and confirm their identity (via a conformation email sent to them) in
the form of email ids. Then keep track of all verifications in a sort of
log, which would be recorded in our common database (can answer questions
about this if needed).

 

This sounds like a wiki?

 

1.      Allow only a preselected group of users to signoff on documents
after they first provide and confirm (same as above) their email id, which
the system will then check to see if this is present in the list of
preselected individuals. All of these signoffs will also be recorded in the
database.

2.      Have a simple login system which has a list of email ids and
passwords stored in the common database, and allows users to login t signoff
on documents. All interactions here, including the login and signoff will be
logged.

 

My team and I greatly the community's input on this matter and look forward
to hearing from you.

 

Thank you,

Ajay B. Medury (& Team Dashboard)

 

 

_______________________________________________
Spdx-tech mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.spdx.org/mailman/listinfo/spdx-tech





 

-- 

=============================================
Jeremiah C. Foster 
GENIVI Community Manager
Pelagicore AB
Ekelundsgatan 4, 6tr, SE-411 18 Gothenburg, Sweden
Mobile: +46 (0)730 93 0506 <tel:%2B46%20%280%29730%2093%200506> 
E-Mail: [email protected]
=============================================

=== NOTE ===
The information contained in this E-mail message is
intended only for use of the individual or entity
named above. If the reader of this message  is not
the intended recipient, or the employee or agent
responsible to deliver it to the intended recipient,
you are hereby notified that any dissemination,
distribution or copying of this communication is
strictly prohibited.
=============


_______________________________________________
Spdx-tech mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.spdx.org/mailman/listinfo/spdx-tech





 

-- 

Mutual of Omaha Associate Professor of Information Systems

University of Nebraska at Omaha
 <http://myweb.unomaha.edu/~mgermonprez/> Vita
 <http://ocrl.unomaha.edu/> Open Communities Lab

 <http://1.usa.gov/17mbd1Z> NSF Grant on Open Communities





 

-- 

=============================================
Jeremiah C. Foster 
GENIVI Community Manager
Pelagicore AB
Ekelundsgatan 4, 6tr, SE-411 18 Gothenburg, Sweden
Mobile: +46 (0)730 93 0506 <tel:%2B46%20%280%29730%2093%200506> 
E-Mail: [email protected]
=============================================

=== NOTE ===
The information contained in this E-mail message is
intended only for use of the individual or entity
named above. If the reader of this message  is not
the intended recipient, or the employee or agent
responsible to deliver it to the intended recipient,
you are hereby notified that any dissemination,
distribution or copying of this communication is
strictly prohibited.
=============





 

-- 

Mutual of Omaha Associate Professor of Information Systems

University of Nebraska at Omaha
 <http://myweb.unomaha.edu/~mgermonprez/> Vita
 <http://ocrl.unomaha.edu/> Open Communities Lab

 <http://1.usa.gov/17mbd1Z> NSF Grant on Open Communities

_______________________________________________
Spdx-tech mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.spdx.org/mailman/listinfo/spdx-tech

Reply via email to