to CN or not to CommonName?

[Harald Tveit Alvestrand <Harald@Alvestrand.no>]

After looking through the LDAP RFCs, both V2 and V3, I find myself still 
unable to answer this:

Although RFC 2256 section 5.4 unambiguously states that "cn" is associated 
with the OID 2.5.4.3 "X.500 CommonName", and the language of RFC 2252 
section 4.2:

>   Schema developers MUST NOT create attribute definitions whose names
>   conflict with attributes defined for use with LDAP in existing
>   standards-track RFCs.

bars the use of "cn" for anything but this, I cannot find a place that 
gives an opinion on whether the use of other names, like "commonName", for 
the same attribute should be:

- freely allowed and encouraged
- allowed, but discouraged
- disallowed

(my personal take: ought to be disallowed, or at least fiercely sworn at, 
for all newly constructed databases. But I'm enamored of uniformity....)

                        Harald

--
Harald Tveit Alvestrand, Maxware, Norway
Harald.Alvestrand@maxware.no