[[license text=""" Copyright © 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled [[GNU_Free_Documentation_License|/fdl.txt]]. By contributing to this page, you agree to assign copyright for your contribution to the Free Software Foundation. The Free Software Foundation promises to always use either a verbatim copying license or a free documentation license when publishing your contribution. We grant you back all your rights under copyright, including the rights to copy, modify, and redistribute your contributions. """]] A principal is an accountable entity. A principal may be a user. On some computer systems, users are represented by their respective UID. A process may also be a principal. However, a principal may span multiple processes (a web request that causes a CGI script to be invoked) or a principal may contain a number of separate principals (a web server serves multiple requests, each request represents a different principal).