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[[meta copyright="Copyright © 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc."]]
[[meta license="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]]."]]

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).