Re: WebID-ISSUE-39: Simplify how public keys are expressed

Certs are not encoded in asn1 value syntax, Henry. Asn1 is just a language of specification, of description of types and values. It c, vs the assembler generated from expanding the c macros into good patterns of machine instructions that then allow for engineering in the native instructions of the machine.

If we can point to a .sig file in wot, we can point to a .CRT in graphs more generally (since . CRT and . Sig share almost identical unwebiness, and are related since both are digital signatures (of something - that we look to the graph for the answer)).

The notion of "ugliness" is dealt with by reference to history (of the php . Sig) when ugliness was succesfully traded against utility, legacy and adoptibility. Never an easy tradeoff to make... But ones that seem to influence mass take-up in the crypto-political space.

We ate gnats biting the skins of several elephants, with billion dollar budgets) The only way to get them to move - being a gnat - is to induce a stampede (from fear, or towards food).

On Feb 16, 2011, at 9:29 AM, Henry Story <henry.story@bblfish.net> wrote:

> 
> On 16 Feb 2011, at 17:52, Peter Williams wrote:
> 
>> I relate this to the wot ontology which showed how to relate to a pgp signature file stream (in some unusual syntax related to asn1).
>> 
>> Perhaps , very similarly, one can relate to a .CRT file with x509 signature (attached to a cert bearing a public key).
> 
> My conclusion from that debate was:
>  - don't mix syntaxes. ASN.1 Stands for Abstract Syntax Notation. Why should one mix HTML or XML or JSON in with ASN.1 ?
>  - stick to semantics. ASN.1 is syntax. our protocol is defined at the semantic level. We want to be syntax agnostic.
>  - It's not that flexible. What happens when we start wanting to use Elliptic curve cryptography. Even the people in the DNSsec world are trying to get away from ASN.1 formats!
> 
>   That does not mean that ASN.1 has no place. A document encoded in an ASN.1 format is just another document. That is what ISSUE-6: "using ASN.1 formats for WebID description" is for. 
>   http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/webid/track/issues/6
> 
> 
> Henry
> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Feb 16, 2011, at 6:24 AM, WebID Incubator Group Issue Tracker <sysbot+tracker@w3.org> wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> WebID-ISSUE-39: Simplify how public keys are expressed
>>> 
>>> http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/webid/track/issues/39
>>> 
>>> Raised by: Nathan Rixham
>>> On product: 
>>> 
>>> Issue raised by Manu Sporny / Nathan at https://github.com/webid-community/webid-spec/issues#issue/12
>>> 
>>> Create a new mechanism to simply list public keys from a profile document to a certificate. More information can be found here:
>>> 
>>> http://lists.foaf-project.org/pipermail/foaf-protocols/2010-September/003603.html
>>> 
>>> and here:
>>> 
>>> http://lists.foaf-project.org/pipermail/foaf-protocols/2010-September/003705.html
>>> 
>>> and here:
>>> 
>>> http://lists.foaf-project.org/pipermail/foaf-protocols/2010-October/003837.html
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
> 
> Social Web Architect
> http://bblfish.net/
> 
> 
>

Received on Wednesday, 16 February 2011 18:02:48 UTC