Terminology - certificate or key ?

[Daniel Kahn Gillmor]

On Sun 2016-10-02 13:48:01 -0400, Michael A. Yetto wrote:
> I thought what might be meant is what I have always referred to as a
> slam lock. That is, a locking mechanism that stays locked after opening
> from the inside and locks itself after closing from the outside.

as a native en_US-speaker, I can confirm that the most precise term here
is "slam lock".  however, i've found that term is not particularly
widely-known or understood, which probably makes it a bad choice for
explanatory metaphor :(

fwiw, i disagree with Werner that X.509 certificates and OpenPGP
certificates are radically different.  There are differences for sure --
chief among them the composability (and decomposability) of OpenPGP
certificates, as well as their multi-issuer nature.  But conceptually
both formats provide transferable, cryptographically-verifiable
assertions about bindings between identities, capabilities, and public
key material.  This is roughly what "certificate" means to most people,
and that's the right term to use in my opinion.

            --dkg
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