- From: Nathan <nathan@webr3.org>
- Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2012 22:04:36 +0000
- To: Henry Story <henry.story@bblfish.net>
- CC: Kingsley Idehen <kidehen@openlinksw.com>, "public-webid@w3.org" <public-webid@w3.org>
Henry Story wrote: > On 20 Nov 2012, at 22:39, Kingsley Idehen <kidehen@openlinksw.com> wrote: > >> All, >> >> More for reference purposes, since it isn't going into the WebID spec. >> >> WebDAV Access Control Ext. Spec [1]: >> >> A "principal" is a distinct human or computational actor that >> initiates access to network resources. In this protocol, a >> principal is an HTTP resource that represents such an actor. > > > you can see that this is already confused. > 1. it says a principal is a distinct human or computation actor > 2. that a principal is an http resource that represents an actor. > > Which is it? The resource that represents the actor, or the actor? Both, this ties in with WebID exactly. 1. principal = agent (machine agent or human agent) 2. principal identifier = a dereferencable HTTP URI which identifies a principal (agent). The "represents" is just age old wording and conflation nuances, you could rewrite the quote to read: A "principal" is a distinct human or computational agent that initiates access to network resources. In this protocol, a principal is identified by an HTTP URI, which upon dereferencing provides a representation of a description of the principal. Which is loosely equivalent to what's defined in WebID 1.0. Make sense?
Received on Tuesday, 20 November 2012 22:05:45 UTC