How is OStatus related to W3 WebID and FOAF?
Thomas Fritz
How is OStatus related to W3 WebID (http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/
webid/spec/) Specification and FOAF Schema described here
http://bblfish.net/tmp/2011/05/09/ and what are the similaritys?
Kind regards
Melvin Carvalho
There are some historical roots. The original Yadis which become
OpenID 1 was based on FOAF.
Ostatus was originally a delegated credentials system rather than an
identity subsystem.
WebID is an identity system complementary to OpenID, however slightly
more suited for automated use, rather than in-browser use, which is
where OpenID is strong. Both provide single sign on. WebID allows an
entry point to HTML5 style linked data and FOAF, which is a growing
part of the web, particularly with govt. data.
Everything is still kind of evolving, even though some products, such
as OStatus and OpenID have wide adoption. WebID is at the W3C
incubator group stage, which is one stage before standardization.
This allows flaws to be ironed out, talking to other groups etc. Tho
the WebID spec is pretty stable now and there are quite a few
implementations.
What would be good to see over time is a coming together of ideas
allowing developers to choose the right tool for the right job.
Hope that helps!
>
>
> Kind regards
>
evan
<melvinc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Ostatus was originally a delegated credentials system rather than an
> identity subsystem.
No, it was not.
-Evan
Melvin Carvalho
Apologies if I have that wrong. That is how it was explained to me.
Happy to be corrected :)
>
> -Evan
>
Melvin Carvalho
Sorry Evan, got completely mixed up, I was referring to OAuth of course!
I'll rewrite my reply!
>
> -Evan
>
evan
<melvinc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 20 May 2011 17:29, evan <ev...@status.net> wrote:
>> On Fri, 20 May 2011 17:21:02 +0200, Melvin Carvalho
>> <melvinc...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Ostatus was originally a delegated credentials system rather than an
>>> identity subsystem.
>>
>> No, it was not.
>
> Apologies if I have that wrong. That is how it was explained to me.
>
> Happy to be corrected :)
Sure. From http://ostatus.org/about ,
"OStatus is an open standard for distributed status updates. Our goal
is a specification that allows different messaging hubs to route status
updates between users in near-real-time."
From
http://ostatus.org/sites/default/files/ostatus-1.0-draft-2-specification.html
,
"OStatus lets people on different social networks follow each other.
[...] OStatus is a minimal specification for distributed status updates or
microblogging."
I don't think there's any way that can be interpreted as "a delegated
credentials system."
Maybe you meant to write "OpenID"?
-Evan
Melvin Carvalho
Sorry or the earlier mixup, I was referring to OAuth rather than
OStatus ... need more coffee!
WebID is an identity system for the web, using linked data / FOAF /
HTML5 for the representation, and authentication via PKI.
OStatus is a set of protocols for to eneable federated social
networking in general.
OStatus does not specify an identity system to be used, but FOAF
should be possible to plug in to an OStatus compliant system.
From the spec:
OStatus does not specify a static representation of the social
graph nor a protocol for retrieving that representation for a user. We
defer to FOAF or XFN where this is required.
The people I know of working on a WebID / OStatus system are some of
the elgg developers and lorea.cc and there is some talk about modules
for drupal 7, but they are not ready yet to my knowledge.
Hope that explains things a bit better! :)
>
>
> Kind regards
>
Melvin Carvalho
FSW meet in Berlin (was a slight issue with listserv)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Danny Ayers <danny...@gmail.com>
Date: 9 June 2011 16:36
Subject: Re: How is OStatus related to W3 WebID and FOAF?
To: Melvin Carvalho <melvinc...@gmail.com>
On May 20, 5:43 pm, Melvin Carvalho <melvincarva...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 20 May 2011 16:30, Thomas Fritz <fritz...@gmail.com> wrote:
Ok, I feel I should have a go...
> > How is OStatus related to W3 WebID (http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/
> > webid/spec/) Specification and FOAF Schema described here
> >http://bblfish.net/tmp/2011/05/09/and what are the similaritys?
OStatus uses various concepts that corresponds closely to those
described in FOAF - notably User, which is roughly equivalent to
Agent. (In both cases you're most likely to see one of type Person).
For terms used in OStatus for things like Post etc. there are direct
parallels in RDF vocabularies such as SIOC. No surprise, there's a lot
of common background - Atom is in the middle there too.
I'd suggest WebID could play a role around the discovery &
identification aspects of OStatus. Whereas in FOAF "Give Yourself a
URI" (http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/node/71) is enough for
many purposes, by the same token, WebID could offer an (optional,
lightweight) security component. WebFinger with trust?
The big difference as far as I can see is that FOAFish statements tend
to have a fair degree of persistence, OStatus is mostly dynamic
aspects, transient operations, which although they could be expressed
using RDF, there wouldn't usually be a great deal of point.
(Similarly there is an RDF vocabulary for HTTP messages, but it's only
of interest to a handful of researchers).
btw, OAuth/OStatus confusion was also done couple of days ago by the
chair of the WebID group - naming, meh!
Cheers,
Danny.