Re: Reviewing the Solid protocol

On Sun, Jul 24, 2022 at 3:18 PM Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@w3.org> wrote:

> Solid is a growing protocol/movement, and the tech parts of it — the Solid
> Project — are basically a W3C Community group.
>
> Solid adds things which the web needed but hadn’t yet standardized,
> including global single sign-in, standard access control, and a fast API
> for data read-write between an app and a store (a Solid Pod).  By making
> the API to the store universal, it means you don’t have to change the store
> when you make a new app, which completely changes the architecture and
> markets and business models which are possible. It also leaves individuals
> empowered rather than exploited.
>
> Would it be reasonable for the TAG to review the architecture at a high
> level, or review the protocol?  It would be useful to get a knowledge of
> the Solid stack in neighboring parts of the technology.
>
> (A separate future question are the client-client interop specs which are
> needed for interop between apps, such as contacts, chat, etc.)
>
> See https://solidproject.org/. https://solidproject.org/TR is where the
> specs end up after their github-based proces.
>

Hi Tim

Hope you're well.

I get quite a bit of feedback on Solid, from grass roots developers.  Over
recent years, I tend to get feedback along the lines that it's a steep
learning curve, with a lot of complexity.  This leads me to wonder whether
there would be value in a Lite version.

An architectural point that I was never able to reconcile is the banner
statement on ( https://solidproject.org/ ) which says:

"With Solid, you won't be tied to the provider you choose now. That is, you
have the ability to move your data elsewhere if you want."

I was never able to reconcile this in my head with idea of "Cool URIs don't
change"

https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI

It wasn't clear to me a mechanism to move data elsewhere on the web,
without incurring other issues  e.g. 3xx would require your previous
provider to offer a service, without potentially any incentive to do so,
and so on.

I'm sure there is a quite subtle way to reconcile the two positions, but I
was never able to grasp what it was.  As you know, we worked with Sandro
quite a bit on the "crosscloud" concept to do this, but I'm unsure a firm
conclusion was reached.  It would be great to see this problem solved at
the level of web architecture.

Love the idea of human and machine readable data on the web, with users and
agents given the ability to both read and write.  I hope that, one day,
this can be weaved into the fabric of the web.

Best wishes
Melvin


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> Best wishes
>
> Tim BL
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