Re: Fwd: Re: Request for terminology input - consumer/inspector/TBD Credential

On 06/08/2016 03:10 PM, Steven Rowat wrote:
> On 6/8/16 8:11 AM, Manu Sporny forwarded Joe Andrieu:
>> A claim is a cryptographically signed statement.
> [snip]

I would change this to just a statement (claims needn't be verifiable).
A verifiable claim is a cryptographically signed statement.

>>
>> A credential is a collection of one or more claims
> [snip]

A credential is a collection of one or more claims.

If the claims are verifiable, the signature on those claims is included
in the credential. The entity making the claims is also specified in the
credential -- along with other information, such as, when the claims
were made and their lifetime/expiration date.

>>
>> A profile is a collection of one or more credentials
>
> +1
>
> This seems a very clear honing-down into parent-child sets that I
> find easy to understand. I hope it's accurate.  :-)

Yes. I'm not yet convinced we should eliminate "Identity" because I
think that's actually what we're talking about, but "Identity Profiles"
is a phrase we've used to describe collections of credentials in the past.

>
> And after reading Joe's email and linked first paper on Identity, I'm
>  swayed that Identity is too loaded culturally, and also
> inappropriate because of the way it is most commonly used, and
> shouldn't be used for a static property.

I agree with David Chadwick that "Identity" should be "Identification"
in that paper. The act of determining something's identity is
"identification". Something's identity is "what" (noun) makes it
distinct from other things. That you must correlate something to other
things in order to identify it (distinguish it from other things) does
not change the fact that those correlations make up its identity.

>
> Hence I agree "Profile" is better for the third, super-set. Or if
> there's objection to that on some grounds, it could be something
> analogous like Alter (used by the Psychologists in DID), or Avatar or
>  Persona or Portrait or Character. But Profile works for me.

The advantage of "profile", to me, is that it eliminates people's
propensity to want to think of "Identity" as encompassing everything
about themselves. If you were to present a document that had their
"identity" in it, they may say, "Hey, that's not me. I'm more than
that!". Saying "This is just one profile of your identity" helps
mitigate that reaction. However, it may be that we should talk about it
that way, but not necessarily bake that into the terminology in the data
model.


-- 
Dave Longley
CTO
Digital Bazaar, Inc.
http://digitalbazaar.com

Received on Wednesday, 8 June 2016 19:21:06 UTC