Re: xsd:anyURI - was: HTTPS and the Semantic Web

> On 21 May 2016, at 21:07, Michael Brunnbauer <brunni@netestate.de> wrote:
> 
> 
> Hello Henry,
> 
> I am glad you agree with me that there is no need for widely deployed URIs to
> change. I have no problem with redirects of widely deployed HTTP URIs to
> HTTPS as long as it is made clear that using the HTTPS namespace is not OK.

yes, no need to rock the whole boat at the same time.

> 
> We are talking about privacy and security issues of Semantic Web applications 
> with regard to the use of TLS. For me, this is clearly Science Fiction, so we
> have some time to fix it. In the meantime, paranoid applications can use
> HSTS and preloaded HSTS lists as a temporary workaround.

This is actually not science fiction, and has many very important use cases
for building distributed social networks, including b2b applications where
confidentiality is important. The Snowden revelations should have made that
clear by now. The pieces have been in place to use it for a while now, and
the semantic web community has lost many valuable opportunities for failing
to take this more seriously. Some pointers to the uses of it are here:

 https://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/webid/spec/

Luckily since those applications are not wide spread, there is not that
much problem moving over to use https urls to identity people, organisations
and agents generally (see the WebID spec).

> 
> In the long run, this should be fixed on a lower layer and there is already 
> work underway to enable publishing "TLS required" preferences via DNSSEC:
> https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-hallambaker-esrv-01

There are many different problems that come together here. Some can be fixed
with Redirects plus DNSEC, others by just deprecating vocabularies. 

It seems to me that vocabulary deprecation ontology would be very useful 
in any case, even if only to make a case about the stability of urls.

> 
> So I actually see no case for a namespace change even for less known
> vocabularies. Anyway, there is already owl:sameAs and a property to express a 
> preferred namespace. Naturally, the latter is meant for human consumers.
> What whould be the automated consequences of ex:canonical/ex:preferreduri? 
> Would app developers care about it?

yes they would. If there were a way to automate the movement to better vocabularies,
old software could last much longer without breaking.

We have to live in a world that changes, even if it helps to think atemporally when
building our functional programs.

> 
> Regards,
> 
> Michael Brunnbauer
> 
> On Sat, May 21, 2016 at 06:13:20PM +0200, Henry Story wrote:
>> 
>>> On 21 May 2016, at 17:40, Michael Brunnbauer <brunni@netestate.de> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Hello Henry,
>>> 
>>> On Sat, May 21, 2016 at 04:18:47PM +0200, Henry Story wrote:
>>>> We should see this large movement as an opportunity to fix a lot of other problems that have come
>>>> up in Linked Data. For example it could allow us to move away from 303 redirects to hash urls that are much 
>>>> more efficient, and finally put that old discussion to rest.
>>> 
>>> Ha! Let the games begin! :-)
>>> 
>>> Seriously, I cannot believe we are having this discussion. The day that that "a"
>>> in Turtle/SPARQL represents https://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type
>>> instead of http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type will be the day
>>> when RDF breaks. Leave it as it is.
>> 
>> clearly some RDF URLS are so widely documented and deployed that these meanings 
>> have to a certain extend escaped from the definition placed at their location. 
>> As a result they won't gain much in security by having https urls. This would
>> be the case for many major w3c rdf and owl URLS. So I don't think there is really
>> a need to move those URLs over.
>> 
>>> All those URI changing fixes to get rid of technical debt will mean a lot of 
>>> pain for a lot of people - unless you can come up with a scheme where those 
>>> fixes are handled transparently by the software. I am not talking of reasoners
>>> here.
>> 
>> You mean like using redirects? That would allow ontologies to be moved to secure 
>> namespaces without I think changing the old URLs.
>> 
>> I think there are ways of doing these redirects securely. I have not looked at that 
>> carefully. Anyone?
>> 
>>> A large fraction of the users don't use them because they are a PITA.
>>> RDF should stay accessible for people who are not top of the range and use 
>>> hard-coded URIs in their code.
>> 
>> yes, there will be quite a long time to live for old well known http URLs. On the
>> other hand for people building less well known vocabs who want to move to more
>> secure vocabs you'll need some "reasoning type solution" like the one we're starting 
>> to propose. In any case that will be needed for changing ontologies, and overcomeing
>> mistakes, etc... So there is good reason to formalise vocabulary transitions, so that
>> these can be automated.
>> 
>>> Maybe we can come up with a completely new RDF where "Cool URIs don't change"
>>> is enforced technically? ;-)
>> 
>> Things change. "Cool URIs' don't change" is of motto so that people think before they
>> change URIs, because of the cost involved which we are just discussin.
>> It's not a statement about the impossibility to make mistakes.
>> 
>> Henry
>> 
>>> 
>>> Regards,
>>> 
>>> Michael Brunnbauer
>>> 
>>> -- 
>>> ++  Michael Brunnbauer
>>> ++  netEstate GmbH
>>> ++  Geisenhausener Straße 11a
>>> ++  81379 München
>>> ++  Tel +49 89 32 19 77 80
>>> ++  Fax +49 89 32 19 77 89 
>>> ++  E-Mail brunni@netestate.de
>>> ++  http://www.netestate.de/
>>> ++
>>> ++  Sitz: München, HRB Nr.142452 (Handelsregister B München)
>>> ++  USt-IdNr. DE221033342
>>> ++  Geschäftsführer: Michael Brunnbauer, Franz Brunnbauer
>>> ++  Prokurist: Dipl. Kfm. (Univ.) Markus Hendel
>> 
> 
> -- 
> ++  Michael Brunnbauer
> ++  netEstate GmbH
> ++  Geisenhausener Straße 11a
> ++  81379 München
> ++  Tel +49 89 32 19 77 80
> ++  Fax +49 89 32 19 77 89 
> ++  E-Mail brunni@netestate.de
> ++  http://www.netestate.de/
> ++
> ++  Sitz: München, HRB Nr.142452 (Handelsregister B München)
> ++  USt-IdNr. DE221033342
> ++  Geschäftsführer: Michael Brunnbauer, Franz Brunnbauer
> ++  Prokurist: Dipl. Kfm. (Univ.) Markus Hendel

Received on Saturday, 21 May 2016 19:55:20 UTC