Re: [Hamlib-stationserver] Terminology

[Art B. <ac...@in...>]

On Mar 7, 2014, at 9:22 AM, John D. Hays <jo...@ha...> wrote:
> DO NOT GO DOWN THIS PATH!   It is the station operator's responsibility to meet the legal requirements of the jurisdiction governing their operation.  Putting such responsibility on the software is both limiting and a mistake.

Absolutely, John.  My  point was that if you don't authenticate users somehow you can't know who's operating your equipment and have no way of enforcing your policies or meeting your regulatory obligations.  And if you authenticate over a shared network without encryption you're laying yourself open to well-known sniffing and impersonation attacks... and possibly a claim of negligence for not applying established best practice.  

Thus multi-user operation, as distinct from multi-client, brings with it a number of additional requirements on the software.  As does the single-user, multiple-station scenario. * 

Like everything else on the Net, IMHO, authentication and access control is best implemented end-to-end.  I wasn't suggesting that Stationserver somehow act as a control operator or set policy for any station, if that's what you feared.  Stationserver is just software.  It can't hold a license and it can't own property.

I'll admit that I'm not real familiar with D-STAR, as I'm personally not at all interested in proprietary (or quasi-proprietary, for that matter) protocols in ham radio.  I know there are folks who are intensely focused on challenging D-STAR, but that's not really my thing, nor do I understand it to be a particular goal of Stationserver.  

Although if it helps I have no objection in principle... ;-)

- Art

* To some extent this is another one of those processor-centric- vs network-centric-view issues I mentioned in an earlier thread.  Currently hamlib is inherently processor-centric, and so authentication is implied in physical control of the processor.  Once we attempt a networked client-server or multi-tier implementation new challenges start to arise that we haven't had to face before.  It's just the price of admission to the networked world.