What is a WebID?

Need to go back to the universals here

The CONCEPT of WebID is a URI -- ie a universal identifier -- you
dereference it, and get back machine readable data, of a certain form which
allows you to useful things.

The nature of that form is that it denotes an Agent, a machine, user or
group operating on the internet

The concept is different from the branding.  The concept will remain
working no matter how it's branded.  Much of the recent discussion is over
branding.

The original branding 15 years ago tied the identifier to both FOAF and to
SSL in order to do client side authentication.

My idea for a rebrand in 2014.  Was to break the ties of FOAF, SSL (ie
WebID-TLS) and identity to be separate concerns.  I would like to point out
that this was my idea, and my idea alone.  Nobody else was thinking along
these lines, in the slightest.  I pitched it at TPAC, and, much to my
surprise it caught on.  Split the concept into an identity spec and an
authentication spec.  Which is what we did.  I remember this very well, I
was sitting between TimBL and Henry at the time.

The specific branding of WebID then went to the group and the new branding
became to tie it to http and to turtle (and http 303 which was a big
debate).  Why?  Because it seemed like a good idea at the time.  We all
wanted linked data and turtle to catch on, and for W3C RECs to create an
interoperable standard on the Web.

Turtle didnt catch on.  And so, a sensible thing to do, as we are doing
now, is to decouple the WebID brand from turtle, and make it a modular set
of specs.  A good idea for the brand, and the concept.

We'll have WebID-Turtle, WebID-JSON-LD and other things that people want.

Should RDF be mentioned in the super set spec?  No.  That's a branding
question, and it depends on whether you want to tie the particular brand at
a particular time to RDF.  RDF has not caught on the way we wanted it to.
In fact the biggest open deployment on the social web, activitypub, has
deviated from RDF.  So to interoperate with that, which we should, the term
machine readable should be used, and RDF placed in the subspecs (sub
brands).

Should WebID be tied to HTTP(S).  Probably yes.  The concept itself is
universal, social can happen over many transports.  The brand http is a
good one and it was always a starting point.  I've always been supportive
of the superset brand NetID (any URI), but let's face it, it didnt catch on
anywhere outside openlink in any major way.  Fair play to Kingsley, to
stand up for that brand, and he may well win through, but NetID is not a
self evident thing, it's a brand and a world view.

So, what is a WebID?  It's whatever we want it to be.  We ought not change
it too much, but it's beneficial and expedient to tweak it to reflect the
reality that has been observed over the last decade.  Keep the brand tied
(for now) to HTTP(S) a MUST in the spec.

Keep it tied to machine readable data in the super spec, and to RDF in the
sub specs.  Have two subspecs to start with:  WebID-Turtle and
WebID-JSON-LD which reflect reality.  If more want to be added such as
WebID-RDFa (with (X)HTML) that can be debated, personally RDFa a NACK for
me because JSON-LD in html has won that battle already, but that's a
branding debate for another day.

Let's proceed without being too pedantic or dogmatic, and keep the concept
of WebID as a universal identifier on the web, in line with the way URIs
are universal, but specify specific modular constraints, at this specific
time (2023 vs 2014) to reflect what's useful and what is reality.  There
should be enough in there to give everyone what they want.  The group will
end up coming to consensus on some or all of these points, but the general
structure will remain intact.

WebID was branded and specified before.  Finalizing the detail can only
improve it from what it is now, both conceptually and in terms of real
world adoption.  Where it ends up is almost certainly better than where it
is today.  And that's a good thing.  But it doesnt matter what I think,
it's up to the group figure out the details, but the highest likelihood is
one of progress and a better spec, which will be good enough to become a
W3C REC.

Just my 2 cents.