Introductions & question - should the Solid Community Group be a 'business group'.

Hi All,

Noting introductions generally;  I wrote:
https://www.webizen.net.au/about/about-the-author/  and have penned the
email. lots to go through, i've tried to be concise in one long email.

*background notes*
as it notes; i wrote http://sailingdigital.com/iBank.html in 2000 which led
to http://sailingdigital.com/Basedrive.html (2000-2) where the documents
reflect my early views as a young-person.

https://www.webizen.net.au/ is being made to contain, like a "hypermedia
book"; an embodiment of the vast amount of work carried out over time;
whilst focused moreover on the work done since ~2010.  Amongst these
constituents of work; i've been involved in various W3 works and have had
the good fortune to have been granted a great deal of time by many
wonderful people, on our divergently shared experiences of working in this
field of endeavour.

I've been working from Australia, without commercial support (which would
have had implications put upon my ability to define 'human centric web'
related requirements, as was needed for the development of solid related
apparatus) with limited financial means and largely in isolation.  Indeed,
its been very difficult; and most, don't understand what RDF is let alone
the rest.  Its been found to be quite unbelievable; as was made example of
recently: https://twitter.com/SailingDigital/status/1050529601049387008

*situational analysis*
The document
https://www.webizen.net.au/about/references/social-informatics-design-concept-and-principles/
somewhat
summarises what has been in-effect, an 18 year loop from eccles related
work; back to eccles related considerations.

I am currently unsure of how solid / inrupt plan to bring forth an array of
solutions that attend to some of these 'information management system'
design needs (for example; such as temporally storing and supporting ACLs
in a social web; as to support the means to ensure old work between people
no-longer working together at a future state, doesn't become erased from
history), nor do i have a good enough awareness of how it is these things
will actually come to market.

There has been a long-standing issue relating to the use of 'credentials'
vs. 'webid-tls' and in relation to that; the means to discern the
difference between a human, and 'identity' as is applied commercially to
mean, an access instrument.

In the real-world, we sign documents for legal purposes using an instrument
owned and controlled by us; online, i'm not sure that's the case?  whose
signature is it?

Thereafter also; the means to communicate the use of Shacl / owl and
related tooling; across the broad-ranging ecosystem that has been brought
about since the advent of works on 'semantic web'; that now, at web-scale,
covers all facets (including IoT (WoT), media analytics, etc.) in a
framework that supports dynamic agents is most-often too hard to describe
functionally; and therefore, the implications of it, become impossibly
difficult to communicate to non-specialist (the vast majority of humanity).

Underneath all of these works is a requirement to redesign the economic
frameworks for the web.  This was raised at the
https://decentralizedweb.net/ 2018 (videos are available online) in the
context of a few 'mainstays' including; the narrowed focus on advertising
revenue; and, that ICANN related stuff was made viable by selling domain
names.   Online, you'll be able to find http://survivingprogress.com/ which
i highly recommend viewing;  it is important to consider that every
decision made by humanity is powered by an 'information management' systems
and we're re-designing the tooling used by humanity as a result of an
earlier proposal being rendered support http://info.cern.ch/Proposal.html

*Considerations*
To do this; i believe we need to look closely at the economic models; which
is not something that is done in W3 CGs; and through understanding how to
innovate new modelling, this in-turn informs work.  In my designs
https://www.webizen.net.au/about/knowledge-banking-a-technical-architecture-summary/
I consider the importance of credentials
https://www.webizen.net.au/about/knowledge-banking-a-technical-architecture-summary/what-are-credentials/
| alongside the means to review business modelling
https://www.webizen.net.au/about/executive-summary/knowledge-banking-legal-structures/
to
support trust and new economic structures
https://www.webizen.net.au/about/executive-summary/knowledge-economics-services/


Technically; this relates in-turn to the decentralised recording, discovery
and private use of commons data; alongside the means to power new economic
models
https://www.webizen.net.au/about/knowledge-banking-a-technical-architecture-summary/what-are-credentials/dids-and-multisig/


For instance; an as yet unpublished application, could be to have a
multi-sig arrangement where a QR code is printed on a coffee-cup containing
a private key, that is used in relation to the exchange data-points
relating to the lifecycle of recycling the use of that coffee-cup, through
attributing changes to a ledger; using a minimum of 3 keys to do so.

Ie: rinse and recycle, and attribute
1. the retailer, the customer and the coffeecup
2. the customer, the coffee-cup and the recycling point
3. the coffee-cup, the recycling point and the recycling actor (ie: washing
the cup)
4. the recycling actor, the coffee-cup and a retailer

Therein; these considerations bring with it the need to consider technical
metrics, that in-turn speak to capability and investment cases.   Similarly
to the coffee-cup, we could build an ecosystem that supported innovation,
such as https://slicingpie.com/the-grunt-fund-calculator/  (or
https://www.webizen.net.au/about/executive-summary/knowledge-economics-services/
);
yet, moreover,

Whilst i believe we'll end-up with a 'knowledge banking industry' that will
support a 'human centric web'; technical people like to argue about
semantics, whilst people don't have anything in their hands.

Today; i am most interested in a mobile app that provides the basics, and a
means to start scaffolding into existing 'info spheres' such as word press
sites and the like.  I would also like the output of this mobile mainstay;
to be open-sourced, and considered moreover a research project.

as was noted by TimBL in his talk in CSIRO a number of years ago;
https://twitter.com/SailingDigital/status/1050380049185001473  his thoughts
included battery life issues.  I consider, that the vast majority of
people; who could rapidly use a mobile app, to help them better participate
in civic affairs (ie: engaging with their system of government / democracy,
or supporting reporting of fake-news, et.al.) wouldn't have the volume of
data exhibited by users such as TimBL; but rather, the 'web of data'
underneath any such a form of implementation, would be substantively less;
and surely, designed to work with online hosted 'pods'.  It seems important
early-stage work is not commercially fragmented and that the means to
ensure good hygiene with respect to the interests of contributors;
would/should/could accelerate development and reduce risk.

So, i'm not really sure how all of this translates through to forming some
form of 'work in progress' thing.  I note manu sporny was very good, in
managing the payments and credentials CGs in that teleconferences were
arranged weekly; use-cases fleshed out, etc.  yet; in terms of this CG in
particular, I'm not entirely sure the 'vision' of solid is very clear.

Do we have an anonymous response to a computer vision, biometric signature
based request for information about the 'data subject' being furfilled by
way of timo.id.au/myface/myresponse?  surely that doesn't really 'help' nor
is intended to be the way it'll work.   Do we want people to say 'well,
that's from your pod, so, i'm not going to trust that information', even if
its a date-stamped retail receipt or some other information of importance -
like health information, where a doctor needs to ensure it's not all been
made-up to get a 'prescription only drug'...

so therein;  given i'm not going to be coding the thing by myself, nor is
anyone going to be doing that; and most people who represent groups who can
built the technology, will be bound to traditional and non-traditional
duties of employment and/or directorship duties for the relevent entities
(and their stakeholder needs, etc.  in a world where even Elon has
problems)

But, perhaps it comes down to two things.

1. Solid has an array of requirements that in-turn lead to a requirements
analysis that could / should be taken-up by other w3 work-streams, in
various CGs, IGs, WGs, etc.  As solid is so 'all encompassing' i'm not sure
how well that applies to the broader 'ecosystem'.

2. Is the solid CG a business group? https://www.w3.org/community/about/#bg and
if it is not, should it be?

If there is another plan; i'd like to know about it.  I'm fairly sure,
others would too.  There's alot of people deeply invested into this vision,
but none seek to 'gift' systems that may control thought of others; to
anyone.  Those with the greatest powers are governments, at the end of the
day if they tell you to get into the police car, there's not much to argue
with them about; they're going to need to know how to deal with these types
of systems and solutions, as to provide their means to back an alternative;
to their otherwise somewhat 'helpful' relationships, with major silos.

Overall; i think its critically important to be straight-forward about
things.  Will solid support some sort of 'verifiable claims infrastructure
solution', or not.  Will 'web-payments' be beneficially supported by solid
for human use; or not.  Do we need to review the merits of what was called
https://www.w3.org/wiki/Webizen or not.

Does solid need new technical standards? or not at this stage.  Does it
need a w3 business community?  or not.  in the realm of internet governance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_governance which organisation is
currently 'fit for purpose' to do the work?  or does that not currently
exist.

Cheers,

Timo.






On Sat, 13 Oct 2018 at 05:35 Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi All
>
> *Introduction*
>
> I gave it a few days to allow time for people who wanted to join this
> gropu.  Looking through the list of (41) it's nice to see a roughly even
> mix of new faces and old.  Also, representatives of many of the firms
> operating (or thinking of operating) in the solid space.
>
> Welcome all!
>
> *Personal Introduction* : My name is Melvin Carvalho, I've been a web
> developer on Solid [1] for the many years.  My particular interest, is to
> create a payment framework on top of the existing platform.
>
> Solid does not have a mailing list, and it was felt that the w3c was a
> good fit for such a thing, with its long track record of producing royalty
> free specifications.
>
>
> *Possible Areas of Collaboration*
>
> Solid by it's modular nature, and due to bottom up design benefits from
> standardization, common patterns and best practices.  As time goes on
> documenting how people are using solid will enable new participants to
> benefit from existing work.  I see four main areas
>
> 1. *Client Side*.  This includes work on solid libraries and user agents
> (browsers).
>
> An example would be how to handle cross origin http fetch requests in
> modern browsers and servers.
>
> 2. *Server Side*.  This includes work on running a solid server, and also
> helping server admins get started and maintain servers, deal with
> logistical aspects, and share experiences.
>
> An example would be how to set up a pod given a fresh machine, getting ssl
> certificates, setting up a reverse proxy and adding terms and conditions.
>
> 3. *Applications**. *This includes writing solid apps, using frameworks,
> best practices, app libraries and app stores*.  *Also, importantly
> creation and maintenance of shared vocabularies.
>
> An example would best practices for creating single page apps quickly
> using modern frameworks (e.g. react, vue, angular)
>
> 4. *Protocols**. *This would be the specs currently used by the solid
> stack [1].  We can document proposals [3].  Push them upstream to the solid
> repositories.  Work on interoprability and perhaps try to create charters
> and working groups in order to create w3c recommendations.
>
> An example would be to create an efficient patch format to provide
> realtime updates to agents watching a resource.
>
> *What's Next?*
>
> Please feel welcome to use this mailing list.  Community groups tend to be
> quite broad and casual in nature, tho we should try and ensure that posts
> are on the topic of solid.  If you have some ideas or apps best on solid,
> or if you have a demo, a spec, or a design pattern, this is a place to
> share.
>
> Over the next few weeks the group can self organize and work out which
> work items people would like to take on.
>
> Not necessary, but some of the newer member might want to introduce
> themselves (a sentence on who they are and one on why they are interested
> in solid).
>
> Look forward to working with you all!
>
> Melvin
>
> [1] https://solid.mit.edu/
> [2] https://github.com/solid/solid-spec
> [3] https://github.com/solid/solid/tree/master/proposals
>