Code change:
5.3.2. <ins> In some credential schemes, a valid credential can "expire", or become invalid after a certain point in time.  For example, each X.509 certificate has a "notAfter" field, expressing a time after which the certificate is not valid. Expired credentials can cause operational problems in light of the validation requirements of credential-validation.  Applications can apply some operational practices and adaptations to Authentication Service policies to moderate these impacts. In general, to avoid operational problems such as new joiners rejecting expired credentials in a group, applications that use such credentials should ensure to the extent practical that all of the credentials in use in a group are valid at all times. If a member finds that its credential has expired (or will soon), it should issue an Update or Commit that replaces it with a valid credential.  For this reason, members SHOULD accept Update proposals and Commits issued by members with expired credentials, if the credential in the Update or Commit is valid. Similarly, when a client is processing messages sent some time in the past (e.g., syncing up with a group after being offline), the client SHOULD accept signatures from members with expired credentials, since the credential may have been valid at the time the message was sent. If a member finds that another member's credential has expired, they may issue a Remove that removes that member.  For example, an application could require a member preparing to issue a Commit to check the tree for expired credentials and include Remove proposals for those members in its Commit.  In situations where the group tree is known to the DS, the DS could also monitor the tree for expired credentials and issue external Remove proposals. Some credential schemes also allow credentials to be revoked. Revocation is similar to expiry, in that a previously valid credential becomes invalid.  As such, most of the considerations above also apply to revoked credentials.  However, applications may want to treat revoked credentials differently, e.g., removing members with revoked credentials while allowing members with expired credentials time to update. 5.3.3. </ins> MLS implementations will presumably provide applications with a way to request protocol operations with regard to other clients (e.g., removing clients).  Such functions will need to refer to the other

Related discussion:
text: In our opinion, we landed on leaving it up to the app/AS how it guarantees consistent validations because we think there are a bunch of different but reasonable ways this could be done. Yet, which of those is best (even among just the couple we could come with on the fly) depends on things like the app's security assumptions, communication models and access to third-party services, not to mention the details of how the AS works. To start off with, it wasn't even totally clear to us that the "context"-based syntax really applies to all reasonable AS designs. (Thats how we ended up on the notion of "consistency" as that is the more abstract and minimal guarantee we really needed to avoid forks. Context is just one way we thought of to get consistency.) But say the AS does conform to "context"-based syntax. Maybe the app/AS ensure consistency by only ensuring that the (possibly different!) contexts being used by clients still produce the same result. Further, even if we are more opinionated and assume an app/AS will ensure an identical context is used in all validation cases this still leaves room for many variations. Who chooses the context used for a given epoch? Maybe the commitor? Maybe the AS? Maybe the DS (which we already have to trust it to avoid forks)? Maybe a group-context extension? Also, how is the context distributed? Out-of band? By the AS? By the DS along with commit/welcome packets? Along with group contexts? Each made sense to us in the right setting... One thing we toyed with for a while was the requirement that the commitor authenticates the particular context C they used when creating a commit packet (e.g. by using C as associated data or a PSK or something). But, not only is that already pretty opinionated about how consistency should be enforced, it also wasn't clear to us what the actual point is. TBH at first I was for it at first out of instinct (and ignoring the being opinionated part for the moment), but NAME did a good job of convincing me that I couldn't actually justify it beyond "it feels right". What kind of, otherwise not possible, attack is this trying to defend against?