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Shepherd writeup
draft-ietf-oauth-v2

PROTO writeup for draft-ietf-oauth-v2-22

The OAuth Working Group requests the publication of draft-ietf-oauth-v2-22 as a
Proposed Standard RFC.

  (1.a) Who is the Document Shepherd for this document? Has the
        Document Shepherd personally reviewed this version of the
        document and, in particular, does he or she believe this
        version is ready for forwarding to the IESG for publication?

Barry Leiba is the document shepherd.  I have reviewed this version, and am
satisfied that it's ready.

  (1.b) Has the document had adequate review both from key WG members
        and from key non-WG members? Does the Document Shepherd have
        any concerns about the depth or breadth of the reviews that
        have been performed?

The document has adequate review, and I have no concerns.

  (1.c) Does the Document Shepherd have concerns that the document
        needs more review from a particular or broader perspective,
        e.g., security, operational complexity, someone familiar with
        AAA, internationalization or XML?

I have no concerns.

  (1.d) Does the Document Shepherd have any specific concerns or
        issues with this document that the Responsible Area Director
        and/or the IESG should be aware of? For example, perhaps he
        or she is uncomfortable with certain parts of the document, or
        has concerns whether there really is a need for it. In any
        event, if the WG has discussed those issues and has indicated
        that it still wishes to advance the document, detail those
        concerns here. Has an IPR disclosure related to this document
        been filed? If so, please include a reference to the
        disclosure and summarize the WG discussion and conclusion on
        this issue.

I have no concerns.  There is no IPR involved.

  (1.e) How solid is the WG consensus behind this document? Does it
        represent the strong concurrence of a few individuals, with
        others being silent, or does the WG as a whole understand and
        agree with it?

There is consensus of the working group, as a whole, behind it.

  (1.f) Has anyone threatened an appeal or otherwise indicated extreme
        discontent? If so, please summarise the areas of conflict in
        separate email messages to the Responsible Area Director. (It
        should be in a separate email because this questionnaire is
        entered into the ID Tracker.)

No.

  (1.g) Has the Document Shepherd personally verified that the
        document satisfies all ID nits? (See the Internet-Drafts Checklist
        and http://tools.ietf.org/tools/idnits/). Boilerplate checks are
        not enough; this check needs to be thorough. Has the document
        met all formal review criteria it needs to, such as the MIB
        Doctor, media type and URI type reviews?

Yes; all is well.

  (1.h) Has the document split its references into normative and
        informative? Are there normative references to documents that
        are not ready for advancement or are otherwise in an unclear
        state? If such normative references exist, what is the
        strategy for their completion? Are there normative references
        that are downward references, as described in [RFC3967]? If
        so, list these downward references to support the Area
        Director in the Last Call procedure for them [RFC3967].

All references are properly separated and labelled.
There is a normative reference to RFC 2246 (obsolete), TLS 1.0, as the most
widely deployed TLS version at the time of this writing. There are normative
references to three Informational RFCs: 2818 (HTTP Over TLS), 4627
(application/json Media Type), and 4949 (Internet Security Glossary). The
working group and the shepherd believe that these are all appropriate
references.

  (1.i) Has the Document Shepherd verified that the document IANA
        consideration section exists and is consistent with the body
        of the document? If the document specifies protocol
        extensions, are reservations requested in appropriate IANA
        registries? Are the IANA registries clearly identified? If
        the document creates a new registry, does it define the
        proposed initial contents of the registry and an allocation
        procedure for future registrations? Does it suggest a
        reasonable name for the new registry? See [RFC5226]. If the
        document describes an Expert Review process has Shepherd
        conferred with the Responsible Area Director so that the IESG
        can appoint the needed Expert during the IESG Evaluation?

The IANA Considerations section is correct and adequate.  This document creates
four new registries, and they are clearly specified and populated as
appropriate.

  (1.j) Has the Document Shepherd verified that sections of the
        document that are written in a formal language, such as XML
        code, BNF rules, MIB definitions, etc., validate correctly in
        an automated checker?

There is a small amount of ABNF, and it is correct.

  (1.k) The IESG approval announcement includes a Document
        Announcement Write-Up. Please provide such a Document
        Announcement Write-Up? Recent examples can be found in the
        "Action" announcements for approved documents. The approval
        announcement contains the following sections:

     Technical Summary
        Relevant content can frequently be found in the abstract
        and/or introduction of the document. If not, this may be
        an indication that there are deficiencies in the abstract
        or introduction.

The OAuth 2.0 authorization protocol enables a third-party application to
obtain limited access to an HTTP service, either on behalf of a resource owner
by orchestrating an approval interaction between the resource owner and the
HTTP service, or by allowing the third-party application to obtain access on
its own behalf.  This specification replaces and obsoletes the OAuth 1.0
protocol described in RFC 5849.

     Working Group Summary
        Was there anything in WG process that is worth noting? For
        example, was there controversy about particular points or
        were there decisions where the consensus was particularly
        rough?

There have been a number of controversies over the course of the development of
OAuth 2.0.  All were eventually worked out to the satisfaction of the working
group as a whole, and the result has significant consensus in the group, but
some of it hasn't been easy.  The native application scenario (see section 9)
remains a significant point in question: applications that users install --
perhaps may be convinced to install by malefactors -- are always a difficult
security point, and that is true with OAuth as well.  As the text in the
document says, these "may require special consideration", particularly in
regard to security.

Because OAuth is trying to tie together applications and services from
different trust domains, and because it is relying on end users to make
important decisions, largely based on what they're told by the user interfaces,
there are an extraordinary set of possible threats and security considerations
involved.  The working group has chosen to handle this with a Security
Considerations section that covers general issues and focuses on protocol
issues, and a separate document (draft-ietf-oauth-v2-threatmodel) that
describes detailed threats and further security considerations in more depth
than would be possible in the base protocol spec.  There has been a great deal
of discussion about where the line is -- what should go into the Security
Considerations (section 10) in the base spec, and what will be in the companion
document (to which there is an informative reference at the beginning of
section 10).

In the end, the current text reflects strong working group consensus, though it
is not without disagreement.  The working group believes the two documents
together do the right job, they continue to work on
draft-ietf-oauth-v2-threatmodel, and they expect to complete that document
within the next months.

     Document Quality
        Are there existing implementations of the protocol? Have a
        significant number of vendors indicated their plan to
        implement the specification? Are there any reviewers that
        merit special mention as having done a thorough review,
        e.g., one that resulted in important changes or a
        conclusion that the document had no substantive issues? If
        there was a MIB Doctor, Media Type or other expert review,
        what was its course (briefly)? In the case of a Media Type
        review, on what date was the request posted?

There has been fairly broad deployment of OAuth 1.0, from such companies as
Yahoo!, Facebook, Google, and Twitter, and many of the existing deployments
have been keeping up with the OAuth 2.0 progress, and adjusting their
implementations accordingly.  Quite a number of working-group participants have
given the current spec very thorough review.
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