Re: publickey link relation for WebFinger? (was: Re: using HTTP 'From' request header)

On 16 Dec 2011, at 19:03, Bob Wyman wrote:

> I'd really like to see a "publickey" link relation for WebFinger which would point to one or more public keys that are associated with the acct:. There doesn't seem to be anything like this in the existing registry. Does anyone know if such a thing is defined anywhere else? If not, should I create an Internet Draft to register publickey? Is there some reason that we should *not* have a publickey link relation?

Well you can use WebID's cert:key relation to point multiple times to a number of public keys.
There is an example in RDFa on http://webid.info/spec . (The spec has just got a very large overhaul, so check it out again )

So I think Salmon being based on Atom does have space for you to put your WebId in your atom. I think one could argue that the
atom:id field could play this role.  I do that in my atom feed, which I am slowly reviving.

    http://bblfish.net/blog/blog.atom

Then when you dereference the id you find in my atom you can get straight to any number of my keys.

> 
> What I envision is something like the following:
> 
> <Link rel="publickey" 
>       type="http://salmon-protocol.org/ns/magic-key" 
>       href="http://example.com/mymagic-keys.json"/>
> 
> The idea is that, when using protocols like Salmon Magic Signatures, you would be able to say "This was signed with acct:bob@example.com's key" and have people then use WebFinger to fetch the public key that should be used to verify the signature.

I think if web finger were reliably to be able to point people to your WebID then that would be a very good place to publish your public keys.


> 
> (Yes, I am aware that Magic Signatures already defines a Property serialization for magic-keys, however, I'd like to be able to link to the keys as well as have a general mechanism, not specific to Magic Signatures, for linking to keys that might be in other formats -- such as X.509 certificates.)
> 
> bob wyman
> 
> 
> On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 2:17 PM, Peter Saint-Andre <stpeter@stpeter.im> wrote:
> On 12/14/11 12:11 PM, Gonzalo Salgueiro wrote:
> >
> > On Dec 14, 2011, at 12:26 PM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
> >
> >> On 12/14/11 10:18 AM, Paul E. Jones wrote:
> 
> <snip/>
> 
> >>> My thinking for the link relations is that we ought to investigate
> >>> using the registry that was established by RFC 5988.  So, rather than
> >>> have link relations sprinkled around the web, should we centralize
> >>> them at IANA?
> >>
> >> s/investigate using/use/
> >>
> > I'm in full agreement here and immediately see the benefit of such
> > centralization.
> >
> > Peter - What is the best way to kick that off?  I suppose a separate
> > draft/RFC would be required  to establish an IANA registry for link
> > relations.  If so, I can get started on making that happen.
> 
> Mark Nottingham (cc'd) already did that work for you... :)
> 
> http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5988
> 
> The registry is here:
> 
> http://www.iana.org/assignments/link-relations/link-relations.xml
> 
> Instructions for registering new relations are here:
> 
> http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5988#section-6.2.1
> 
> However, Mark might be simplifying those procedures (in line with recent
> thinking about making it easier to interact with IANA).
> 
> Some examples of forthcoming relation registrations can be found in
> three documents that I'm currently shepherding at the IETF:
> 
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ohye-canonical-link-relation/
> 
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-amundsen-item-and-collection-link-relations/
> 
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-yevstifeyev-disclosure-relation/
> 
> Peter
> 
> --
> Peter Saint-Andre
> https://stpeter.im/
> 
> 
> 

Social Web Architect
http://bblfish.net/