Re: Summary of cert : key Domain discussion

On 30 March 2013 14:59, Henry Story <henry.story@bblfish.net> wrote:

>
> On 30 Mar 2013, at 14:45, Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Summarizing the thread.
>
> I proposed that the Domain of : key be more general than Agent, since a
> public key is just a number, more than just an agent could have such a key.
>
>
> The :key relation relates an agent to a public key of which he has the
> private key.
> This means that one can understand what it is to verify that an agent has
> a key.
>

Yes, so I think this is a bug that goes back to the time when WebID was
branded as FOAF + SSL.

So then a WebID becomes part of FOAF.  I think the community will have to
decide whether it wants to closely couple the TLS spec to FOAF or not.  For
example, facebook dont use FOAF in their profiles, though they did consider
it.

Actually I forgot to count Mo's opinion, so at present I think rdf :
Resource is slightly ahead in the straw poll.


>
> An example I gave was that an account (e.g. belonging to an agent) could
> have a key pair.
>
>
> the whole question is what does it mean to "have a key pair" .
>

I think we can use the typical OO concepts of "has-a" and "is-a" for this.
So the subject "has a" key.


>
>
> Henry raised the point that you would then lose an inference that the
> subject of a key was an Agent.  However you should really use rdfs : type
> for this imho.
>
>
> My point was that
>   - changing the domain means that you have developed a completely
> different relation which is not the same as cert:key.
>   - that it does not make things simpler as you initially claimed it would
>   - that it is ill defined
>   - that your reasons for wanting to introduces it rely on handwaving some
> ontology which has not been developed
>   - that you can't tell us what it would mean for the relation to apply to
> inanimate objects
>   - that you don't distinguish nonsensical from sensical applications of
> the term, when it is applied outside of the realm of agents.
>

I think you have something of a case here.  However I'd caution against
using the "ambiguity" argument.

This has come up on occasion in the TAG and Tim's response is that we
should try and get things working rather than be "ambushed" by ambiguity.

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2012Oct/0086.html


>
>
> Henry also raised the point that it would be possible to construct triples
> such as the eiffel tower having a public key.  Unsure if this is a big
> deal, or even a demerit :)
>
>
> You could not tell us why you thought this was or was not nonsensical,
> what it would mean, etc...
>

I did, perhaps you missed it, but ive repeated above, "has a"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Has-a


>
>
> There was a small straw poll which was pretty evenly balanced, slightly in
> favour of keeping the status quo.
>
> If there's further interest in this I'll raise an issue at some point.
> But I think I have enough to model what I want to now.
>
>
> Social Web Architect
> http://bblfish.net/
>
>