Subject: [COSE] Issue - Restore 'use' COS key parameter description

From: "Jim Schaad" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 2016 11:23:54 -0800

This starts a fast series of emails trying to get the current set of issues
resolved.

JOSE has a historical key parameter of 'use' which was defined long before
the 'key_ops' parameter was defined at the request of the W3C WebCrypto
group.  These parameters do the same basic thing - they say what operations
a key can be used for.  I am not clear what level they are being used in the
wild, but I expect that 'use' is far more commonly used if only because it
was defined several years before 'key_ops' was used.

Part of the discussion at the time of JOSE was to make the 'use' parameter
be either a single value or an array of values.  This was resisted as being
too complicated for programmers to deal with.  Instead they need to deal
with the possibility that a key contains both the 'use' and 'key_ops'
parameter and make sure that they are consistent with each other.

The version of the message document -09 contains text which harmonizes it
with the W3C work in terms of what is needed for 'key_ops' to be set
correctly.

I would like to have only  single structure that deals with the permissions
assigned to a key.  This can be done by not putting the 'use' parameter back
into the document.  If there is a strong desire to have something that maps
closer, then it would be reasonable to allow for 'key_ops' to have either a
single value or an array of values.  This would mean that there is a basic
equivalence to 'use' and 'key_ops' for a single value case as long as one
believes that 'use' was really only designed to talk about public key
operations and not private key operations.

I would like to close this issue by the end of the week.

Jim

---

From: Mike Jones <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 2016 19:31:33 +0000

I will be on vacation until Wednesday. Please take no action to close any issues I've opened until I've had a chance to review the proposed resolutions later in the week.

Thanks,
-- Mike
________________________________
From: Jim Schaad<mailto:[email-masked]>
Sent: ‎1/‎4/‎2016 11:26 AM
To: [email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>
Subject: [COSE] Issue - Restore 'use' COS key parameter description

Jim

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