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Date: Sun, 5 Jun 2016 04:23:36 -0400
Message-ID: <CAKws9z3zCUPtsCu6QsFBMG4DOPE-ecsnOMaYP_TOgf5O-7UNAQ@mail.gmail.com>
To: PHP Internals <internals@lists.php.net>
Cc: Pierre Joye <pierre.php@gmail.com>, Stas Malyshev <smalyshev@gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Libsodium - Discussion
From: scott@paragonie.com (Scott Arciszewski)

On Sun, Jun 5, 2016 at 4:12 AM, Fleshgrinder <php@fleshgrinder.com> wrote:
> On 6/5/2016 9:46 AM, Scott Arciszewski wrote:
>> Libsodium already knocks it out of the park compared to OpenSSL and
>> Mcrypt. If we want to talk about a higher-level abstraction-- such as
>> what's provided by paragonie/EasyRSA + defuse/php-encryption or
>> paragonie/halite-- I wholeheartedly endorse that discussion. But I don't
>> think we should try to solve that problem with this particular RFC.
>>
>> In closing, I don't disagree that a simple crypto API is a good goal to
>> have. I just think the ideal you're discussing is:
>>
>> A. Out of scope, and
>> B. Kind of belittling to how much of an improvement libsodium is to what we
>> already have.
>>
>
> You are completely ignoring that once this is out the door there is no
> way back. We already see many problems in the current API and we should
> address them until we reach a point where the majority does not see
> major problems anymore.
>
> Doing anything else is just irresponsible!
>
> --
> Richard "Fleshgrinder" Fussenegger
>

I'm trying to keep concerns separate. I do want to make the pluggable
crypto API happen, but I barely have time for this libsodium RFC and I
don't want to conflate the two. (Even worse: I wouldn't want the mere
thought of an abstract high-level API to block libsodium from getting
accepted.)

Instead of /completely redesigning/ the libsodium API, what are some
changes that need to be made to alleviate the majority of concerns
("it's not the pluggable crypto API" notwithstanding)?

Two things to keep in mind:

1. If it breaks existing code that uses libsodium-php in a nontrivial
way, I'm going to resist the change unless it can be proven necessary
for the sake of everyone's sanity.
2. If it greatly deviates from the experience of using libsodium in
other programming languages (e.g. renaming crypto_box), you no longer
have libsodium and thus I will resist it.

Getting rid of redundant features (by improving existing ones, not
just cutting them!) is fine. Dropping scrypt, etc. is fine.

Scott Arciszewski
Chief Development Officer
Paragon Initiative Enterprises <https://paragonie.com>