I broke this out into its own heading
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Apps/Security#Centralized_permissions_manager

Similar ideas were discussed later in the thread. I don't believe
I've seen any objections to having permissions being centralized for
control / auditing purposes. 

There is still an open question on how a permissions manager should 
respond in the event of a DENIED permission. One suggestion is to not
error out but return some default/safe value e.g. no contacts if an
app is not granted Contacts information. A concern of this proposal
is that an app may continue to poll for a permission until it is
granted or an app may pop up a dialog to have the user grant the
permission. 

I don't think the dialogue prompt will be a big issue if we have
contextual permissions. If ChessApp asks for geolocation on start,
is denied, then pops up a dialogue saying it needs geolocation,
I would hope the user realizes something is fishy. 

To address the polling issue, we could try exponential backoff
when an app requests a permissions. The app would have to wait
1, 2, 4, 8 seconds etc between requests. Of course the permissions
manager should always be able to change the permission even if
the backoff for an app is at 10 years.


David Chan


----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jim Straus" <[email protected]>
> To: "Jonas Sicking" <[email protected]>
> Cc: [email protected], [email protected], 
> [email protected], "mozilla dev webapps"
> <[email protected]>, "Mozilla B2G mailing list" 
> <[email protected]>
> Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2012 1:09:06 PM
> Subject: Re: [b2g] OpenWebApps/B2G Security model
> 
> Hello all -
>   I've been sketching out an implementation of permissions.  I've
>   laid out some code framework, but wanted to through tis out for
>   validation.  Assumptions:  that B2G/Firefox will have separate
>   processes for each app/tab.  This is already declared to be true
>   (but not implemented) for B2G.  This proposal doesn't required ipc
>   , but I believe we need to support it.  Also note that this should
>   be able to replace the existing Permission and PermissionManager
>   in gecko.
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