[tor-dev] A proposal to change hidden service terminology

[Roger Dingledine]

On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 01:13:26PM -0500, A. Johnson wrote:
> 	1. '''onion service''' should be preferred to refer to what is now called a "hidden service". If other flavors of onion services develop in the future, this term could refer to all of them, with more specific terms being used when it is necessary to make the distinction.

I'm a fan.

> 	1. Some names for a setup in which the onion service location is known but still must be connected to via the Tor protocol:
> 		* '''Tor-required service''', '''TRS''' for short
> 		* '''Direct onion service''', '''direct service''' for short
> 	2. Some names to specify that the onion service is hidden, if that becomes necessary:
> 		* '''Protected onion service''', '''protected service''' for short
> 		* '''Tor-protected service''', '''TPS''' for short

You know how we call "a person who makes an anonymous Facebook account
over Tor and uses it without ever identifying herself to Facebook"
a Tor user? And how we also call "a person who logs into her 'real'
Facebook account over Tor" a Tor user?

I think for more onion service scenarios than we think, we should
just call them onion services and not specify which components of the
rendezvous process are short-circuited and which aren't.

And for those situations where we're specifically talking about whether
the rendezvous process is short-circuited on the client side and/or the
service side... I wonder what people think of this 'short-circuited'
term. (It is both an English idiom and also actually true.)

--Roger