Re: Archaic HTTP "From:" Header

Register "webid" as a Link Relation Value and ese the LINK header as in
Link: <http://...." rel="webid">

This will make sure you don't step on someone else's header, no-one will
step our yours. This will also allow you to include it in the header and
(when appropriate) include it within a message body.


mamund
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On Mon, May 27, 2013 at 7:18 AM, Melvin Carvalho
<melvincarvalho@gmail.com>wrote:

>
>
>
> On 3 April 2013 19:18, Kingsley Idehen <kidehen@openlinksw.com> wrote:
>
>> All,
>>
>> I think the HTTP "From:" header [1] is now truly archaic circa. 2013. If
>> the range of this particular predicate was a URI it would really aid our
>> quest for a RWW.
>>
>> Suggestion:
>>
>> As part of our RWW bootstrap effort, we could consider an "X-From:"
>> header that basically takes a URI or Literal value.
>>
>> I think we can flesh this out across WebID and RWW via implementations
>> before moving up to TAG and IETF.
>>
>> Mark: what do you think, anyway ? :-)
>>
>
> After some investigation on this:
>
> Here is the current text, which is slightly different from the RFC
>
> [[
> 5.5.1<https://svn.tools.ietf.org/svn/wg/httpbis/draft-ietf-httpbis/latest/p2-semantics.html#rfc.section.5.5.1>
>  From<https://svn.tools.ietf.org/svn/wg/httpbis/draft-ietf-httpbis/latest/p2-semantics.html#header.from>
>
> The "From" header field contains an Internet email address for a human
> user who controls the requesting user agent. The address ought to be
> machine-usable, as defined by "mailbox" in Section 3.4<http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5322#section-3.4>of
> [RFC5322]<https://svn.tools.ietf.org/svn/wg/httpbis/draft-ietf-httpbis/latest/p2-semantics.html#RFC5322>:
>
>
>   From <https://svn.tools.ietf.org/svn/wg/httpbis/draft-ietf-httpbis/latest/p2-semantics.html#header.from>    = mailbox <https://svn.tools.ietf.org/svn/wg/httpbis/draft-ietf-httpbis/latest/p2-semantics.html#header.from>
>
>   mailbox <https://svn.tools.ietf.org/svn/wg/httpbis/draft-ietf-httpbis/latest/p2-semantics.html#header.from> = <mailbox, defined in [RFC5322] <https://svn.tools.ietf.org/svn/wg/httpbis/draft-ietf-httpbis/latest/p2-semantics.html#RFC5322>, Section 3.4 <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5322#section-3.4>>
>
> An example is:
>
>   From: webmaster@example.org
>
> The From header field is rarely sent by non-robotic user agents. A user
> agent *SHOULD NOT* send a From header field without explicit
> configuration by the user, since that might conflict with the user's
> privacy interests or their site's security policy.
>
> Robotic user agents *SHOULD* send a valid From header field so that the
> person responsible for running the robot can be contacted if problems occur
> on servers, such as if the robot is sending excessive, unwanted, or invalid
> requests.
>
> Servers *SHOULD NOT* use the From header field for access control or
> authentication, since most recipients will assume that the field value is
> public information.
>
> ]]
>
> 1. "From" seems to be largely unused according to various sources
>
> 2. Some people are already using "From" for http URIs
>
> 3. From my informal straw poll more people are in favour of using HTTP
> URIs in From than against (roughly 2 to 1), though those against seem to be
> strongly against
>
> 4. It may be possible to use another header, but that is less intuitive,
> and we will need suggestions
>
> 5. It was pointed out that, what later became known as "WebID" stuffed an
> HTTP URI in the header field.
>
> 6. The User-Agent field is used by spiders such as baidu and google to
> give an HTTP URI
>
> IMHO, this is a valuable use case for identifying on the web, without a
> dependency on X.509 certs which are (at least perceived as) very hard to
> deploy.  If you want strong security use TLS but it need not be mandatory
> for more casual usage.  A use case might be to get a casual social web
> going eg via the tabulator extenstion
> So the question is which header to use for identity on the web ...
>
>
>>
>> --
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Kingsley Idehen
>> Founder & CEO
>> OpenLink Software
>> Company Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
>> Personal Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/**blog/~kidehen<http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen>
>> Twitter/Identi.ca handle: @kidehen
>> Google+ Profile: https://plus.google.com/**112399767740508618350/about<https://plus.google.com/112399767740508618350/about>
>> LinkedIn Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/**kidehen<http://www.linkedin.com/in/kidehen>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>