Re: Web Identity specification and Social Web

On 6 March 2014 20:52, Mike Macgirvin <mike@macgirvin.com> wrote:

> On 3/7/2014 12:13 AM, Melvin Carvalho wrote:
>
>> IMHO, we dont need to touch the cert ontology, if that's going to be a
>> barrier.  But defining identity well is important, something where other
>> groups have not done well.  e.g. Persona dont use URIs, OpenID/OAuth didnt
>> use URIs for a long time (ie XRI dependencies) but now are more aligned to
>> mailto: and http: URIs.
>>
> My problem with URIs - and I've brought this up before, is the way they
> are mapped onto the DNS system. They have no mobility if for instance you
> tire of juicebook.com and decide to go with griggle.com. Or you've got a
> decentralised service using sporepod and your server admins shut down
> because they can't pay the bills. DNS is fine for systems and internet
> connected devices, but systems and internet connected device do not map
>  perfectly to people (or in this case "identity" since I see identity as a
> superset of "people". What we did in zot was separate DNS from the
> identity. They work fine as a pair. But you can take the identity and
> attach it to a different URI and the identity still works.
>
> There *could exist* a URI scheme where these are separate URI components
> which combine to make an "addressable identity" and where the identity
> component isn't tied to a DNS name (and in fact we do this today in red,
> though there is currently no scheme attached to the identity bits). However
> I reject solutions which lock me into a particular vendor or DNS domain -
> as the solutions currently being bantered about tend to do.  The solution
> do jour for this mobility problem is to be able to take your identity and
> export/import to another service or DNS site. But we've got a bigger
> problem on our hands with this method, because you are no longer the same
> identity if your identity is tied to the DNS name. Any information on the
> web which refers to your old identity has to be corrected; and this could
> be replicated in millions of places - account lists, access control lists,
> tagged photos, etc.
>

Perhaps you are thinking of HTTP URIs

Note there is also a dns: URI scheme

Mike:  I'd highly encourage you to look at this

http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Axioms.html#uri

This is really the magic bullet of the web ... in the hands of someone like
you, it could really be a game changer! :)