RE: [Owasp-input-api-developers] Vision Document

[Christopher T. <ch...@ch...>]

If we are going to be voting Apache style (which I support), then I would
have vote -1 for this version of the doc for the following reasons (other
than the specifics below, however, I think it is a good start):

1)  In Word format.  The document states that changes can be made by
submitting diffs to the document.  How do you do that with a Word doc?  For
consistency with the stated goal of the rest of the OWASP project, it should
be in DocBook format (I volunteer to convert it - I'll try to do that this
weekend).

2)  I strongly disagree with the statement:  "We will NOT develop for any
proprietary technologies such as Microsoft .NET or Microsoft DCOM in any
shape or form."  Since when is Java *not* a proprietary technology?
Furthermore, what you are saying with this statement is that MS coders don't
deserve tools to help them make their web apps more secure, which is
preposterous.  They need tools like the Filters API even worse than folks
who use Java.  To preclude any programming language would be irresponsible.
On the other hand, this is an open source software project, so if none of us
feels like porting the API to .NET or whatever, then so be it.  :-)

3)  What is meant by "correctly 'Huffman Encoded' interfaces"?  This isn't
an objection so much as a point of clarification -  maybe I'm a total
ignoramus, but I ususally assume that if I don't know what something means,
I'm probably not the only one.

4)  I am not sure I understand the whole boundary filter idea.  I don't
necessarily want to re-hash something that's already been discussed, but if
someone could provide a simple description or example, I'd appreciate it.  I
know what boundary checking is, I'm just not sure you're talking about the
same thing.

5)  I think we will need to consider a wider character set than UTF-8, for
I18N reasons.  This may present a porting challenge, as different languages
have differing levels of support for Unicode (just to cite one possible
encoding).

6)  There are numerous typos and grammatical errors that I'll try to fix
when I convert this to DocBook this weekend.

Regards,
Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: owa...@li...
[mailto:owa...@li...]On Behalf
Of Alex Russell
Sent: Monday, August 12, 2002 1:06 PM
To: owa...@so...
Cc: Mark Curphey
Subject: [Owasp-input-api-developers] Vision Document


Hey Everyone,

After much discussion, the project is now (apparently) stalled. To
combat this, Mark Curphey and I have drafted a "vision document" to
outline the purpose of the project and our preferred approach to
development.

You'll find the document attached for your review. Gabe or Mark should
be announcing a vote on the document soon, so it'd be good if everyone
were familiar with it's contents before we vote to adopt it.

Thanks,

Alex

--
Alex Russell
al...@Se...
al...@ne...