[[!meta copyright="Copyright © 2007, 2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc."]] [[!meta license="""[[!toggle id="license" text="GFDL 1.2+"]][[!toggleable id="license" text="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]]."]]"""]] 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).