Re: Verifiable Claims Telecon Minutes for 2016-02-09

Nice analysis Steven.  Thanks!  I will start updating the use cases to
reflect this.

I do note that Subject has an RDF connotation that some of us will
appreciate.  Of course, I should probably make certain our use does not
collide with that use in the cases where we are actually producing things
that look like triples.  Longley?

On Tue, Feb 16, 2016 at 9:57 AM, Steven Rowat <steven_rowat@sunshine.net>
wrote:

> On 2/16/16 6:23 AM, Daniel Burnett wrote:
>
> +1 for Subject.  Not only does it work well when humans are the
>> Subject, it works also when non-humans are.  For example, in a claim
>> that no antibiotics were found in the cow just before it was killed
>> for meat, the cow is the Subject of the claim.  Or in a claim that a
>> car was in exactly two accidents in the state of California, the car
>> is the Subject.  It has the advantage of not implying whether the
>> Subject is the initiator of the claim or whether the claim was made
>> about the Subject independent of any action on the Subject's part.
>>
>
> Yes. I think Bearer (or Holder) is potentially more confusing for the cow
> or machine. It would be as if we're attempting to say that the cow or
> machine has some agency or part in the process, which they don't, and this
> might cause an extra step for outsiders trying to understand what the
> referents are.
>
> In the current Use-cases terminology,
>
> http://opencreds.org/specs/source/use-cases/
>
> there's a 'holder' defined:
> "An entity that is in control of a particular credential. Typically a
> holder's identity is also the primary subject of the information in a
> credential. A holder is often the entity that initiates the transmission of
> a credential."
>
> But this seems to leave out the cow and machine situations, or
> tangentially inversely refers to them in the word 'typically'.
>
> So it seems that the word 'Subject' would be required anyway, in the cow
> and machine situation, even if there's still a 'holder', who 'holds' the
> claim about the cow.
>
> But then 'subject', if it's already included as a basic defined term,
> could also be used as a single word when the person-who-it's-about is the
> 'subject'. In those cases, which would be a lot of the cases, 'holder'
> wouldn't be required.
>
> In other words, it looks like a useful change to the existing terminology
> might be to use 'Subject' as the main word, with 'holder' only used as an
> additional category when needed because the claim is about a cow or
> machine.  :-)
>
> Steven
>
>
>
>
>


-- 
-Shane