[foaf-protocols] First WebID Teleconference minutes (July 27th 2010)

[Kingsley Idehen]

Nathan wrote:
> Melvin Carvalho wrote:
>   
>> On 2 August 2010 13:54, Henry Story <henry.story at gmail.com> wrote:
>>     
>>> In the end what matters is that we can all interoperate, and that we can
>>> build cool apps.
>>>
>>>       
>> +1 to interoperate and apps ...
>>     
>
> The interoperability issue transcends WebID though, and WebID only 
> solves part of a much bigger problem.
>
> Efforts like JSON-LD and XSPARQL and indeed all others aim to address 
> the other issues in the overall RWW.
>
> IMHO 'WebID' is not one thing, what is commonly referred to now as WebID 
> and formally as FOAF+SSL is one case for a group of different things.
>
> What is a WebID?
> - a WebID is a URI which Identifies an Agent, where upon dereferencing 
> of that URI you receive machine readable data.
>   Also being Human Readable is in some cases beneficial but not required.
>   
Required for practical purposes.

We have to keep Human and Machine readability on same level here.

Machine readable on its own always fails. Look at the history behind 
RDF/XML.

Anyone should be able to drop a WebID (Agent URI) into a browser's 
address bar and get back a human readable page that showcases the WebID 
as the Subject of the Structured Profile oriented Descriptor.
> What is this protocol?
> - A party in a +TLS connection presents a Public Key together with a 
> WebID, ownership of the Public Key is first established, then ownership 
> of the WebID is then established.
>   

What about:

Validity of the x.509 certificate is established, and then after that 
ownership of the WebID courtesy of the validated x.509 certificate's 
public key being present in the structured profile document.
> To me, that's 2 distinct things, WebID needing specified first, then the 
> protocol specified afterwards.
>   

Yes, we have an Identifier and a Discovery Protocol that includes 
verification re. WebID and WebID Protocol :-)
> Anything out with the above comes in to mapping the protocol to specific 
> set(s) of technologies (like RSAv3 Cert with subjectAltName, like HTTP+TLS)
>
> Further, any stipulation of what classifies as Machine Readable Data (ie 
> only this or that serialization of RDF can be provided when a 'WebID' is 
> dereferenced) will further limit and inhibit the protocol (even though 
> it doesn't feel like it). Again, this can be addressed by providing 1 or 
> more mappings to common serializations.
>
> I've said this many times, but we're trying to build a stable 
> interoperable protocol on an unstable foundation. The SemWeb and Linked 
> Data serialization and format issues are inherited, and that leaves only 
> two approaches for 'WebID'/this protocol:
>
> 1: define most of it as abstract then provide mappings to techs.
> 2: fix the protocol to a single format of mrd.
>
> 2 kinda defeats the purpose unless you tie to RDFa. Anything in between 
> will pretty much ensure the death of this protocol and certainly ensure 
> the interoperability is not globally possible.
>   
We can stay abstract and achieve interoperability. Implementors should 
use exploit HTTP :-)

Kingsley
> Best,
>
> Nathan
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>
>   


-- 

Regards,

Kingsley Idehen	      
President & CEO 
OpenLink Software     
Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
Twitter/Identi.ca: kidehen