[Cryptography Team] Squeak Cryptography Team Code Commercial Acceptance

[Ron Teitelbaum]

> Matthew S. Hamrick
> Sent: Tuesday, January 10, 2006 11:05 AM

> Before you get anything resembling commercial adoption of a language,
> there are a couple things that need to be addressed:
> 
> * Manageability
> * Security
> * Internationalization
> * Data Persistence
> 
> I think Squeak has _something_ to say in all these areas, but for the
> security section to be "approved" by CIOs and application developers,
> you have to have quality documentation and appropriate tests to
> insure your implementation is implemented correctly, does not leak
> sensitive information and does not generally weaken the overall
> security of the system (ala WinXP SP2).

I totally agree with Matt.  I have two main goals, one to contribute to
building tools that are usable and acceptable so that we can gain more
corporate acceptance with squeak, and two to build cryptography into a
commercial product that is written is squeak for my company.   (also to
support other protocol frameworks and make them available to the squeak
community, like X.12, HL7, NCPDP) 

I believe the only way to do that safely is to do it publicly and to have
the work written, reviewed and tested (and possibly broken) by people with a
lot of experience in this field.  

Hopefully we can grow as a team and find a way to prove the potential for
Squeak and Smalltalk.

Does anyone have a suggestion for how to certify our code?  I think it would
be helpful if what we have done to prove our work (testing documentation
...), the qualifications of the person writing the code, and any reference
materials were all kept in a single place.  It would be helpful as a
reference for others, and some proof that may be needed before someone
considers adoption.  What do you all think?

Ron Teitelbaum
Squeak Cryptography Team Leader