Re: Proposal: Web Federation Protocol

On 2 July 2012 06:02, Michiel de Jong <michiel@unhosted.org> wrote:

> Great idea!
>
> fwiw, when people talk about federation, they usually mean setting up
> application-specific decentralized hosting with server-to-server
> messaging.
>
> When you say 'the hyperlink solves this' i think you're talking at too
> low a level, i think it's more accurate to say 'Indie Web + rww +
> linked data solves it'.
>
> About pingback, i don't understand exactly what it does, but i think
> it is based on client-side certificates, so it can never replace
> OStatus or Wave, which are able to function without the need for such
> per-device state. So I think it should be considered a niche solution
> within the web, just like PGP is a niche solution (and not for that
> less valuable) within SMTP.
>

Thanks for the feedback.

Pingback is a simple for that takes roughly 3 parameters

Source -- the source URI (ie sender)
Destination -- the receiving URI (ie recipient)
Comment -- just a meesage

Authentication, if required, is a separate problem.  There are various
methods covered here, and snippets for implementation:

http://www.w3.org/community/rww/wiki/Pingback

You can authentication e.g. with
- SSL
- OAuth
- Dereferncing (like the original blogging pingback)

It's a simple protocol that shows the power of the Web for Federation once
you know how to identify a user.  Normally would be about a day's work
implement, and at least will allow messaging from various systems, and is
an architecture that is extensible extensible to do more.


>
> Having said that, if people start owning their own rww servers, and we
> add some sort of real-time messaging to that, then i think on top of
> that combination you could basically build the same things as both
> OStatus and Apache Wave.
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 2, 2012 at 12:35 AM, Melvin Carvalho
> <melvincarvalho@gmail.com> wrote:
> > There seems to be a few 'Federation' Protocols out there.
> >
> > Two of which are:
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OStatus
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Wave_Federation_Protocol
> >
> > Much of the discussion that goes on today in various project is oriented
> > around how it's possible to make heterogeneous systems Federate.
> >
> > So I was thinking about proposing working on a document something along
> the
> > lines of:
> >
> > 'The Web Federation Protocol'
> >
> > The document could contain some of the "deceptively simple" federation
> > protocols that we have working in the wild, such as linked data and
> > pingback.  In particular, if we can get others to implement pingback
> (which
> > is normally less than a day's work), we can quickly develop an internet
> wide
> > messaging system.
> >
> > Some of you might think, 'that's missing the point the Web is already
> > federated via the URI (hyperlink) ', and there's certainly plenty of
> > evidence to support this.
> >
> > However, to date I'm not sure there exists a very good explanation, for
> > those that are trying to get a better understanding of the Web.
> >
> > Maybe we could put together a narrative, primer, or wiki article, to show
> > how the Read Write Web is already federated, and how it's possible to
> take
> > advantage, embrace and extend?
> >
> > Good idea / Bad idea ... any thoughts?
>