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Re: [OAUTH-WG] Last Call: <draft-ietf-oauth-v2-bearer-15.txt> (The OAuth 2.0 Authorization Protocol: Bearer Tokens) to Proposed Standard

2012-01-24 17:24:34
On 2012-01-23 16:58, Julian Reschke wrote:
On 2012-01-23 16:46, The IESG wrote:

The IESG has received a request from the Web Authorization Protocol WG
(oauth) to consider the following document:
- 'The OAuth 2.0 Authorization Protocol: Bearer Tokens'
<draft-ietf-oauth-v2-bearer-15.txt> as a Proposed Standard
...

Please see my comments in
<https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/oauth/current/msg08120.html>
which I think have not been addressed.
...

In an off-list conversation I heard that what I said before may not be as clear as it could be.

So...

1) draft-ietf-oauth-v2-bearer-15 defines a new HTTP authentication scheme.

2) In the IANA considerations, it references the registration procedure defined in <http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-httpbis-p7-auth-17#section-2.3> (now -18, but that doesn't matter here).

3) That document recommends in <http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-httpbis-p7-auth-17#section-2.3.1>:

   o  The parsing of challenges and credentials is defined by this
      specification, and cannot be modified by new authentication
      schemes.  When the auth-param syntax is used, all parameters ought
      to support both token and quoted-string syntax, and syntactical
      constraints ought to be defined on the field value after parsing
      (i.e., quoted-string processing).  This is necessary so that
      recipients can use a generic parser that applies to all
      authentication schemes.

4) draft-ietf-oauth-v2-bearer-15 ignores this recommendation. It has been mentioned that it might not have ignored it if it had UPPERCASE requirements, but in HTTPbis we try to restrict BCP14 keywords to the actual protocol, not on recommendations on other specs.

5) The registration requirement for a new scheme is "IETF review", which RFC 5226 defines in <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5226#section-4.1> as:

      IETF Review - (Formerly called "IETF Consensus" in
            [IANA-CONSIDERATIONS]) New values are assigned only through
            RFCs that have been shepherded through the IESG as AD-
            Sponsored or IETF WG Documents [RFC3932] [RFC3978].  The
            intention is that the document and proposed assignment will
            be reviewed by the IESG and appropriate IETF WGs (or
            experts, if suitable working groups no longer exist) to
            ensure that the proposed assignment will not negatively
            impact interoperability or otherwise extend IETF protocols
            in an inappropriate or damaging manner.

In this case the WG exists (it's HTTPbis), and the OAuth got two reviews from HTTPbis pointing out the problem -- from Mark Nottingham, the WG chair, and myself, one of the authors.

And yes, I believe the way OAuth defines the syntax *will* impact interoperability.

Also, I haven't seen any explanation why OAuth can not follow the recommendation from HTTPbis.

Hope this clarifies things,

Julian
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