Subject: Registration of new MIME type application/vnd.osa.netdeploy
From: "Steven Klos" <stevek&osa.com>
To: iana&isi.edu
Cc: ietf-types&uninett.no
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 13:30:52 +0000

MIME type name:

      application

MIME subtype name:

      vnd.osa.netdeploy

      "netDeploy" is the subject in various countries of trademark
      applications from Open Software Associates Limited (a public
      company registered in Australia).  Open Software Associates
      Limited hereby grants the right to use the mark only in accordance
      with the intent of this MIME type registration.

      Although MIME type names are case independent, the preferred
      capitalisation in the Content-type header is all lower-case.  In
      all other references the preferred capitalisation is "netDeploy".
      Applications that generate or handle netDeploy documents are
      required to use this where possible.

      To the full extent permitted by law, Open Software Associates
      Limited and associated companies shall under no circumstances be
      liable for any loss, damage or injury (including without
      limitation any loss of profit, indirect, consequential or
      incidental loss, damage or injury) arising from any use of
      applications purporting to implement this document type.

File extension:

      ndc

Required parameters:

      None

Optional parameters:

      None

Encoding considerations:

      netDeploy files often contain binary data, and may require
      protection using one of the content transfer encodings (base64
      preferred).  It is anticipated however that use of netDeploy files
      will be most common over HTTP, which requires no special encoding.

Security considerations:

      A netDeploy document describes a package of files required by or
      to be retrieved and deployed on the client machine and how to
      execute an application embodied in the retrieved files.  As such,
      an implementation of the netDeploy type can in general not control
      the security of deployed applications and netDeploy documents
      should be considered insecure.

      Implementations must provide all reasonable assistance in
      determining the trustworthiness of an netDeploy package and the
      retrieved files, and must provide configurable security alerts
      and controls with the default configuration disabling execution
      of applications retrieved from non-trusted sources.  Security
      alerts should require confirmation for each file to be retrieved,
      and  prevent use of packages that do not pass the internal
      consistency checks (including message digests and other checking
      methods contained in the netDeploy file) and most
      importantly confirmation from the user that a deployed
      application may be launched.  Digital code signing at a component
      and a package level is planned for a future release.

Published specification:

      The netDeploy Packer and Launcher applications that implement the
      type are available from the Open Software Associates group web
      sites, including http://www.osa.com/ and http://www.osa.com.au/.
      The Packer application generates netDeploy packages, and the
      Launcher acts to download, manage and launch applications and as a
      helper application for unpacking netDeploy packages.

      The netDeploy file format description is currently in
      revision 1.2 and has not been prepared for public release.  The
      format contains a header indicating which version is in use, and
      regardless of that the format is extensible in a variety of
      ways, however it is anticipated that the first public
      specification released will be 2.1

Person & email address to contact for further information:

      Steve Klos
      Product Manager
      Open Software Associates Incorporated,
      stevek&osa.com

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Steven Klos                                stevek&osa.com  
Open Software Associates, Inc.   
20 Trafalgar Square, 5th Floor             Phone: 603 886 4330
Nashua, NH 03063                           Fax:   603 598 6877
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   Deploy applications across the net -- http://www.osa.com/