Re: Beginning work on an official Web Access Control spec.

Hi Phil and thank you for your feedback!


On Thu, Oct 17, 2013 at 7:28 PM, Phil Archer <phila@w3.org> wrote:

> Thanks again for raising this, Andrei.
>
> I know you've been doing a lot of work on this at MIT and from what you
> and others have said it's clear that there's a lot of work in the public
> domain. Good. The road from there to an actual standard is though still
> quite steep I'm afraid.
>
> The W3C members are currently reviewing a proposal that will merge and
> expand upon the Semantic Web and eGovernment activities and that includes a
> couple of new working groups [1,2] (if approved, it makes me Data Activity
> Lead too so that's why I'm responding to you). We're also expecting a new
> WG to be formed following the recent RDF Validation workshop [3]. Our
> resources are, of course, finite and so committing resources - I mean Team
> time - to a new WG can't happen without a lot of evidence that the work is
> needed, likely to be implemented, and makes a real impact on the Web. And
> even then we actually have to have a team member available. The vehicle to
> gather that evidence is a Community Group and I strongly encourage you to
> start one of those.
>

Then I guess there would be no problem if we officially do the work within
the RWW group.


>
> Use the CG to gather evidence of demand, existing and likely
> implementations, and to build the community as widely as possible. You can
> write a document that looks a lot like a standard too. See the ODRL CG's
> output for instance! [4]. If you can do all that - and it's hard - then we
> *might* be able to consider a new WG sometime next year.
>

That's fine, my intention was not necessarily to create a new WG. I think
we'll be able to do this work within the RWW or the WebID group.


>
> Don't be put off - the CG route is made for situations like this and I
> hope it will be successful in developing ideas for WebACL - we need it.
> True, it doesn't get you access to the Zakim bridge, no. But you get just
> about everything else [5] and Google Hangouts, Skype, WebEx, GoToMeeting
> and so on provide reasonable alternatives.
>

No worries, I'm quite familiar with the W3C standardization process. Would
there be any problem with us using the Zakim bridge for a new conf call
slot as part of the WebID IG? Basically to have a weekly WebID call and
maybe another call for WAC?

Best,
Andrei


>
> Cheers
>
> Phil.
>
>
>
> [1] http://www.w3.org/2013/05/**odbp-charter.html<http://www.w3.org/2013/05/odbp-charter.html>
> [2] http://www.w3.org/2013/05/**lcsv-charter.html<http://www.w3.org/2013/05/lcsv-charter.html>
> [3] https://www.w3.org/2012/12/**rdf-val/report<https://www.w3.org/2012/12/rdf-val/report>
> [4] http://www.w3.org/community/**odrl/<http://www.w3.org/community/odrl/>
> [5] http://www.w3.org/community/**about/tool/<http://www.w3.org/community/about/tool/>
>
>
> On 17/10/2013 14:05, Andrei Sambra wrote:
>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> For those of you who know me, please skip this paragraph. For the others,
>> I
>> would first like to introduce myself. My name is Andrei Sambra and for the
>> past three years I have been involved in different W3C groups, such as
>> WebID, LDP and RWW (co-chair). As an advocate of Semantic Web
>> technologies,
>> especially those taking user privacy into consideration, I am currently
>> working on two projects, MyProfile [1] (WebID provider / social network)
>> and RWW.IO [2], the later including support for WebID, LDP and WAC [3].
>> RWW.IO is a Read/Write Web-based personal data store.
>>
>> Over the past few years, we have noticed that Linked Data is no longer a
>> technology limited to the public space, finding its way into consumer
>> applications. As a consequence, it becomes increasingly important to be
>> able to protect access to private/sensitive resources. To this regard,
>> the Web
>> Access Control (WAC) ontology [3] has been put together by Tim
>> Berners-Lee,
>> offering the basic means to set up ACLs. Due to its nature (i.e. an
>> ontology) however, it does not provide the formalism necessary to
>> implement
>> it in order to achieve interoperability, nor does it provide an organized
>> space where it can be discussed and improved.
>>
>> The reason behind writing the email is that I would like to know how many
>> people are interested in participating to the standardization process of a
>> Web Access Control spec.
>>
>> The Read Write Web community group has so far been the host of inquiries
>> regarding the WAC ontology. However, being a community group, it does not
>> have access to W3C's teleconference system, nor to the issue tracking
>> system. Depending on your interest in a WAC spec, and the preliminary
>> discussions we might have, we may very well have to create a dedicated
>> working group. For now however, I suggest we use the public RWW list (
>> public-rww@w3.org) in order to coordinate the efforts on this subject.
>>
>> Please let me know how you stand on this subject and perhaps suggest a way
>> to count who is interested in participating (doodle, something else
>> maybe?).
>>
>> Best wishes,
>> Andrei
>>
>> [1] https://my-profile.eu/
>> [2] https://rww.io/
>> [3] http://www.w3.org/wiki/**WebAccessControl<http://www.w3.org/wiki/WebAccessControl>
>>
>>
> --
>
> Phil Archer
> W3C eGovernment
>
> http://philarcher.org
> +44 (0)7887 767755
> @philarcher1
>