linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH -v2] treewide: Rename "unencrypted" to "decrypted"

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Message-ID: <20200319215955.GN25468@kitsune.suse.cz>
Date:   Thu, 19 Mar 2020 22:59:55 +0100
From:   Michal Suchánek <msuchanek@...e.de>
To:     Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>
Cc:     Borislav Petkov <bp@...en8.de>,
        Robin Murphy <robin.murphy@....com>,
        linux-s390@...r.kernel.org,
        Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@...ux.intel.com>,
        Vasily Gorbik <gor@...ux.ibm.com>,
        Tom Lendacky <thomas.lendacky@....com>,
        Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>, x86@...nel.org,
        Heiko Carstens <heiko.carstens@...ibm.com>,
        lkml <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Christian Borntraeger <borntraeger@...ibm.com>,
        iommu@...ts.linux-foundation.org, Ingo Molnar <mingo@...hat.com>,
        Paul Mackerras <paulus@...ba.org>,
        Andy Lutomirski <luto@...nel.org>,
        linuxppc-dev@...ts.ozlabs.org, Christoph Hellwig <hch@....de>,
        Marek Szyprowski <m.szyprowski@...sung.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH -v2] treewide: Rename "unencrypted" to "decrypted"

On Thu, Mar 19, 2020 at 06:25:49PM +0100, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> Borislav Petkov <bp@...en8.de> writes:
> 
> > On Thu, Mar 19, 2020 at 11:06:15AM +0000, Robin Murphy wrote:
> >> Let me add another vote from a native English speaker that "unencrypted" is
> >> the appropriate term to imply the *absence* of encryption, whereas
> >> "decrypted" implies the *reversal* of applied encryption.
Even as a non-native speaker I can clearly see the distinction.
> >> 
> >> Naming things is famously hard, for good reason - names are *important* for
> >> understanding. Just because a decision was already made one way doesn't mean
> >> that that decision was necessarily right. Churning one area to be
> >> consistently inaccurate just because it's less work than churning another
> >> area to be consistently accurate isn't really the best excuse.
> >
> > Well, the reason we chose "decrypted" vs something else is so to be as
> > different from "encrypted" as possible. If we called it "unencrypted"
> > you'd have stuff like:
> >
> >        if (force_dma_unencrypted(dev))
> >                 set_memory_encrypted((unsigned long)cpu_addr, 1 << page_order);

If you want something with high edit distance from 'encrypted' meaning
the opposite there is already 'cleartext' which was designed for this
exact purpose.

Thanks

Michal