Subject: Re: Mozilla editor and DAV

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 11:20:43 -0400

Take a look at DAV4J on http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com. It presents a client API
for accessing WebDAV resources that would make building clients much easier.

[email-masked] (Christian Scholz) on 08/25/99 11:04:37 AM

To:   [email-masked] (Jim Whitehead)
cc:   [email-masked]

Subject:  Re: Mozilla editor and DAV

Hi!

> Just wanted to pass along some Mozilla information I heard last week.  Turns
> out that, at present, no one on the Mozilla team is working on integrating
> WebDAV functionality, a definite bummer.

Wouldn't it make more sense if WebDAV functionality would be implemented
in the underlying OS as then every application automatically would
have access to it.
But I see that maybe more advanced features like properties etc. one would
not be able to handle that way (if it's only some sort of filesystem
structure).

I once also asked on the Linux Kernel Mailing list and it looks as if
also there nobody is working on it.. There have been some interesting
ideas floating around though like implementing filesystems in Perl
which might make the implementation of a DAV prototype quite easy.
(But as I am mostly into Python and my time is quite limited I cannot
do that. But maybe one day I will port it to Python and write the
DAV FS with this.. But we will see :)

> But, it appears that now would be a very good time for volunteers to join
> the Mozilla team and implement DAV, since the Mozilla editor is currently
> being re-built, and it would presumably be fairly easy to add WebDAV support
> in during this rebuild process.

At least it would make sense to have a look at it and tell them where
some hooks should be added to do it later, etc. Usually they're quite
open (as far as I experienced..)

regards,
  Christian

---

From: John Stracke <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 12:46:54 -0400

Stig Bakken wrote:

> IMHO, WebDAV definitely has its place in a filesystem implementation.

It'd be convenient, but think about the security problems: given existing HTTP
authentication protocols, the filesystem code would have to have the cleartext
password of each user.

--
/=============================================================\
|John Stracke    | My opinions are my own | S/MIME & HTML OK  |
[email-masked]|============================================|
|Chief Scientist | NT's lack of reliability is only surpassed |
|eCal Corp.      |  by its lack of scalability. -- John Kirch |
\=============================================================/

---

From: Jim Whitehead <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 10:02:54 -0700

Also caught by the spam filter.

- Jim

-----Original Message-----
From: Stig Bakken [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Wednesday, August 25, 1999 10:04 AM
To: John Stracke
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: [Moderator Action] Re: Mozilla editor and DAV

On Wed, 25 Aug 1999, John Stracke wrote:

> It'd be convenient, but think about the security problems: given
> existing HTTP authentication protocols, the filesystem code would have
> to have the cleartext password of each user.

I was just trying to make a point out of that adding WebDAV support to the
OS didn't have to bloat it.

As for the secure authentication, that is an issue that has to be dealt
with for WebDAV (and HTTP in general) anyway.

 - Stig

---

From: Jim Whitehead <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 10:02:00 -0700

Caught by the spam filter.

- Jim

-----Original Message-----
From: Stig Bakken [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Wednesday, August 25, 1999 9:38 AM
To: John Stracke
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: [Moderator Action] Re: Mozilla editor and DAV

On Wed, 25 Aug 1999, John Stracke wrote:

> Christian Scholz wrote:
> No.  Why would you want to bloat the OS with something that most
> processes don't need? Now, a common library that apps can use easily,
> that'd be different; but it certainly doesn't belong in the kernel.

IMHO, WebDAV definitely has its place in a filesystem implementation.
This won't bloat the OS (not modern ones, at least), and it provides a
useful abstraction that requires little or no no extra work for
application developers.

 - Stig

---

From: John Stracke <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 13:17:18 -0400

> with for WebDAV (and HTTP in general) anyway.

Yes, but the point is that any acceptably strong authentication system is
going to involve credentials that can't be reused.  (E.g., if I'm running
through a proxy, then the proxy can steal my credentials if I use Basic
authentication, but not if I use Digest.) This is more or less OK if only
your browser has the credentials; but, if you want to do a filesystem, it's
going to need access to all the credentials of all the users who want to use
it.  (For example, with Samba, if I want a filesystem to be mounted at
startup, I have to put the password into the appropriate /etc/rc.d script.)