Re: IndieAuth, was Re: W3C - Social Web Working Group

On 21 July 2014 20:08, Kingsley Idehen <kidehen@openlinksw.com> wrote:

>  On 7/21/14 1:32 PM, Sandro Hawke wrote:
>
> On 07/21/2014 01:18 PM, Anders Rundgren wrote:
>
> On 2014-07-21 18:39, Melvin Carvalho wrote:
>
>
>
>
> On 21 July 2014 18:29, Anders Rundgren <anders.rundgren.net@gmail.com
> <mailto:anders.rundgren.net@gmail.com> <anders.rundgren.net@gmail.com>>
> wrote:
>
>     On 2014-07-21 18:23, Sandro Hawke wrote:
>
>         On 07/21/2014 12:20 PM, Anders Rundgren wrote:
>
>             By pure accident I found this:
>             http://www.w3.org/Social/WG
>
>             Anders
>
>
>
>         It's also being announced on the front page, w3.org
> <http://w3.org> <http://w3.org>, and in various
>         media, today.
>
>                 -- Sandro
>
>
>
>     It doesn't appear that WebID is a part of this effort.
>
>     This is somewhat strange because a Social Web without a login seems
> like a moderately clever idea.
>
>
> You need to have a paradigm shift, that webid is nothing to do with login.
>
>
> Apparently not.  We are going to build the decentralized Social Web on
> Facebook Connect then?
> This seems at odds with at least one of the Chair's missions:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNmKO7Gr4TE
>
>
> The point is that identity is separable, and so it has been separated.
> Otherwise it would be too big a piece of work for one WG.
>
> Your oblique mention of Tantek reminds me, I don't know if this group has
> ever talked about the solution he's currently endorsing, IndieAuth:
>
> https://indieauth.com/
>
>  It's fascinatingly minimalist.
>
>         -- Sandro
>
>
> Hmm..
>
> What happens when you don't own a domain?
>
> I say that because of this opening excerpt:
>
> "IndieAuth is a way to use your own domain name to sign in to websites." .
>

Indieweb is only for people that own their own domain.  That leads to
scalability issues.  There are probably more WebIDs (with public keys) than
there are indie web accounts.  Where indieweb shines is that they have a
focus on practical solutions and dogfooding.  Id say in that respect they
are on a par with WebID.

It's curious that the W3C chose this to be the corner stone of the W3C
Social WG, and not WebID.  Of course Harry has also been vocally opposed to
WebID too, tho Timbl has been supportinve.  I think it probably is much to
do with Tantek being able to be a full time dedicated chair, wheras WebID
is largely a volunteer effort.

I think largely WebID, as a brand, has tried to align itself with LDP.

In the end the branding doesnt matter too much.  We just use URIs to point
to things like People, Groups and Agents, and develop a social web that
way.  W3C will rubber stamp what is feels like, perhaps arbitrarily.  But
applications win in the end.

So let's start building stuff! :)


>
> In my world view, anyone should be able to construct digital identity
> without any infrastructure dependency (or points of control) such as:
>
> 1. domain name ownership
> 2. domain name server access and admin privileges
> 3. HTTP server ownership
> 4. HTTP server access and admin privileges.
>
> Today on the Web, there are a plethora of storage providers. These
> providers offer cloud storage via a variety of HTTP based APIs. Thus, it is
> now possible (unlike any time in the past) for end-users to take full
> control of their identity modulo any infrastructure traps.
>
> Note, those cloud services mentioned above aren't the end of the story
> since anyone can perform the following:
>
> 1. copy from the storage back to local storage -- good old backups
> 2. encrypt data at rest -- none of the services can stop you saving
> encrypted content
> 3. if working with RDF based Linked Data, simply look to relative HTTP
> URIs for entity denotation.
>
> As with all human endeavors, attempting to hold down humans beings is a
> temporary endeavor at best, it never scales.
>
> --
> Regards,
>
> Kingsley Idehen 
> Founder & CEO
> OpenLink Software
> Company Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
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>
>