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

On Tue, Feb 16, 2016 at 10:57 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.  :-)
>
> Yes, exactly.  Holder makes more sense as the entity with authority to
release the credential to consumers.

I meant to add, though, that if my comments start us down a cow and machine
rathole at the expense of getting this working for human-based
credentials/claims, then I will happily withdraw those examples, so
consider them merely as food for thought here.


> Steven
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