Re: Notary services requirements -- directions?

["Andreas U. Schmidt" <Andreas.U.Schmidt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Denis,

certain examples in the form of scenarios and use-cases are necessary
*in the beginning* of this requirements document to delineate the scope,
clarify the subject, and provide rationales for the requirements proper.
What we have now, including two suggestions I posted earlier on, could
already be sufficient if we make good use of RFC3029 as a secondary
reference.

"e-Certification Serivces" to me seems overly clumsy - reading that title
one might wonder what such a thing might do *more* than a CA or a
Timestamping Service. At the moment I cannot think of a solid name
which avoids the conflicts with the legal domain of notaries public, and 
still
has some impact. How about "Electronic Notary (e-Notary) Services".
Still I think we should keep some relation to the title of the WG and
not make an ad hoc change which might then persist.

With regard to the abstract I would like to stick to Larry's last proposal.

AUS

Denis Pinkas wrote:

> Larry,
>
> > I was unaware of RFC 3029.  Should we add a reference to
> > RFC 3029 as an example of what is intended in the requirements
> > document? 
>
>
> A requirements document should not simply be a collection of examples.
> Examples can certainly be mentionned in informative annexes, but the 
> core document would still need to say what needs to be supported.
>
> RFC 3029 supports many use cases, maybe too many. A subset of RFC 3029 
> would certainly makes sense once we have define the document filling 
> the requirements (which still need to be defined). RFC 3029 contains 
> solutions to many problems, but it is not a requirements document.
>
> Besides the vocabulary problem about the use of the term "notary", we 
> would have first to define what would be the title and the topic of 
> the requirements document. I would propose something along the 
> following strawman proposal:
>
> "e-Certification Services requirements
>
> Abstract
>
> This document defines the requirements for e-Certification services. 
> Such services may be used when there is a need to register one or many 
> documents and to certify that these documents have been duly 
> semantically verified by a given person prior to registration. These 
> persons may or may not be Notaries, as understood by Civil Law or 
> Common Law. The document to be certified may or may not contain 
> electronic signatures from other persons."
>
> Denis
>
> > Would it be reasonable to rename the document:
> >
> >   Data Validation and Certification Protocol Requirements
> >
> > and replace 'Notary' with 'Data Validation or
> > Certification Service' as appropriate?
> >
> > RFC 3029 contains a few uses of the word 'notary', but
> > only in descriptions of patents and relationship to
> > prior work.
> >
> > Larry