Re: a common understanding of profiles

On 06/26/2015 09:22 PM, Melvin Carvalho wrote:
> On 26 June 2015 at 19:25, Harry Halpin <hhalpin@w3.org> wrote:
> 
>>
>>
>> On 06/26/2015 05:04 PM, Melvin Carvalho wrote:
>>> On 26 June 2015 at 14:23, Evan Prodromou <evan@e14n.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 2015-06-26 07:37 AM, Melvin Carvalho wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Regarding the URI above.  It can become slightly problematic attaching
>>>>> key value pairs to an HTTP document, also doubling as a Person.
>>>>>
>>>> I'm pretty sure I didn't do that in the example I gave.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Well I thought you were tying (for example) the key "@type" and value
>>> "Person" to the http doc : https://evanprodmorou.example/profile
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>> So, how to get interoperable profiles?
>>
>> Note this question was explicitly scoped to the Social Interest Group,
>> as obviously profiles are going to vary alot across systems and only the
>> most generic pieces of syntax. So, could we move this discussion there?
>>
> 
> Thanks, that's good to know.  However I dont think all members here are
> members of the IG (im not for example).  To the extent that a common
> understanding of profiles is a pre requisite for implementing a social api,
> it would be good to get that understood.

Anyone can join the IG.

Again, the way to solve this is probably to look at Activity Vocabulary
carefully first, and then vCard, and then FOAF and see what is missing,
then pull requests with proposed modified changes/mapping to Activity
Vocabulary.


> 
> 
>>
>>>>>
>>>> Pick a data standard, and a way to find the profiles. Then, everybody
>>>> implements that.
>>
>>
>> +1 good to re-use a well-known standard.  Typically, that would be VCard
>> (support across most of the ecosystem), which basically merged with a
>> good deal of PortableContacts in VCard 4.0. It's got an XML
>> serliazation, it maps to hCard for microformat users, and there's a RDF
>> serialization for RDF users (not sure why FOAF didn't closely align
>> more, but that could fixed).
>>
>> For things that aren't part of core vCard, the IG is empowered to create
>> and maintain vocabularies (published as Interest Group Notes), and we
>> imagined there would be lots of activity and iterations and maintenance
>> of these vocabularies might go beyond the lifetime of the WG. The W3C is
>> happy also co-ordinate as needed with schema.org and IETF on these issues.
>>
> 
> -1 to vcard, I dont think everyone can be expected to implement that, does
> anyone here do that so far?
> 
> In general, I think it's unrealistic to propose "one profile standard to
> rule them all", unless there's a very strong reason to do so -- but if the
> WG wants to go in that direction I would say a stand out candidate is WebID
> because
> 
> - It's already a documented spec
> - It is already based on standards, and is 5 star linked data
> - It is already implemented by SoLiD
> - It is already implemented by facebook
> - It already has about 1 billion profiles, out there
> - It provides a discovery mechanism for feeds, followers, friends etc.
> 
> Once again, I dont advocate this as being the single choice, I would rather
> look for common ground for interop.

If by WebID you mean what TimBL means, i.e. identify people using URIs,
I am sure almost everyone agrees that using URIs is the way to go. I
think there's wide agreement there. I believe Facebook and most sites
indeed do that.

If by WebID you mean FOAF, see above re mapping FOAF into vCard 4 and
Activity Vocabulary and seeing what the diff is. Most of the known world
implements vCard and there are very mature libraries for almost all
platforms. Convergence between FOAF/ActivityVocabulary/vCard would be
great, but should be done in IG. FOAF is not supported natively by
Facebook to my knowledge and has very little developer take-up outside
the RDF community, although Matt Rowe had some excellent export tools.

Authentication mechanisms such as WebID+TLS is *out of scope* for this
WG. Even if it was, the necessary cryptographic and security expertise
is clearly not here as well. WebID+TLS is not implemented by Facebook or
any other user-facing vendors to my knowledge (Facebook implements, as
is widely known, a variant of OpenID Connect i.e. Facebook Connect and
my guess will likely support FIDO). People at Facebook, such as Brad
Hill and chair of the W3C WebAppSec WG, have come out quite strongly
against WebID+TLS.

To summarize the well-known arguments about why WebID+TLS is considered
harmful and thus unlikely to be standardized: From a privacy perspective
client certificates send personal data (i.e the URI in the SAN for their
WebID profile) in the cleartext, unlike even usernames and passwords
over TLS. From a security perspective (see triplehandshake attack) there
are so many security bugs in client certificate authentication that it
is being deprecated by the IETF in TLS 1.3.

That being said, the general concepts behind something like WebID+TLS
(use of proof of key material for authentication) is of interest, and
should be discussed in the W3C Web Security Interest Group and the
Security Area (SAAG) at the IETF for further evolution, rather than in
this WG. In detail, a privacy-preserving technique known as channel
binding (i.e. binding authentication to a TLS channel without revealing
personal information) is being worked on actively in the TLS Token
Binding at the IETF. User-centric authentication with
proof-of-possession of key material done using the same-origin policy is
currently being developed by the FIDO Alliance, with the backing of
Google, Microsoft, Paypal, and others. I suspect authentication without
passwords be a solved problem shortly.

So, let's remain on topic and focus on what is chartered for the WG. Thanks!

   cheers,
      harry

> 
> 
>>
>>    cheers,
>>       harry
>>>>
>>>> It would be wrong to assume that the point of this working group is to
>>>> make Melvin's site implemented in FOAF with Turtle talk to Aaron's site
>>>> implemented in HTML with microformats.
>>>>
>>>
>>> I guess Im not quite seeing it how to implement an interoperable social
>> API
>>> without interoperable social profiles.  However, Kingley's reply seems to
>>> make sense. I'll fwd them to the public list.
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> We're here for the important goals of defining a social syntax, and
>> social
>>>> API, and a federation protocol for the seven billion people on the
>> entire
>>>> planet -- not to build ad hoc bridges for the few dozen people
>>>> participating in this group.
>>>>
>>>> Ultimately, that means some people here are going to have to compromise,
>>>> hold their nose, and implement a data standard that they don't usually
>> use
>>>> or like.
>>>>
>>>> -Evan
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>

Received on Friday, 26 June 2015 19:51:28 UTC