So they couldn't call it "SSL 3" because it couldn't be seen to be the Netscape proposal - fair enough.
But it's a shame they didn't take the simpler route and just call it "SSL 4".
It's actually frustrating that the SSL name lived on at all. A clean break would have been better. The parts of TLS that are derived from the original SSL 2.0 system (mainly the ciphersuites) are a plague.
TLS is also a better name than SSL. A "socket" is an implementation concept. TLS really does secure the transport layer.
Correction: While the socket is an implementation concept in some implementations, it generally is not. From RFC 793 (TCP):
To allow for many processes within a single Host to use TCP
communication facilities simultaneously, the TCP provides a set of
addresses or ports within each host. Concatenated with the network
and host addresses from the internet communication layer, this forms
a socket. A pair of sockets uniquely identifies each connection.
That is, a socket may be simultaneously used in multiple
connections.
But then, it is a TCP specific concept, and TLS is a better name because it can be used on top of other transport layers.
1. It was written in 1981. You can find lots of other terms in early-80s RFCs that are no longer applicable to modern TCP/IP.
2. It was written in a time when Unix (and I guess VMS) implementation concerns infected all of standards work; if you follow the IETF, particularly DNS, there has been a long painful process of trying to disinfect standards of implementation entanglements.
But we agree on TLS being the better name, which is probably all the matters to the thread.
I agree for the most part, although as someone who wasn't really paying attention at the time it took me a surprisingly long time to figure out that TLS didn't just mean Thread Local Storage :/.
To give some flavor: I was working at a 3D modeling company that was working on a license deal with MS to provide models for the new Direct3D. We needed a way to browse and visualize models; Java applets was all the rage, and I even found a cool voxel component that would let people see the geometry without giving them the actual geometry.
MS and Netscape both had a set of "foundation classes". Netscape's were much, much better, so, given the time constraints, I used those. Because of a little bit of window dressing in the scroll bars, somebody from a recent acquisition noticed it was Netscape's classes and, by itself, that killed my project and almost killed the entire deal.
The nineties were an ugly time for software development, thanks to Microsoft.
For those who have read God Emperor of Dune, Microsoft was essentially like Duke Leto II. It/he suppressed freedom and creativity until it was like a pot boiling over and exploded all over the kitchen.
