 Doc, Dave Winer, and
Don Park (click to enlarge) |
The afternoon started for me with a session that Dave Winer led on identity in OPML and RSS. There's a need to identify owners and authors in OPML and RSS without creating email addresses that can harvested by spammers. This is a good time to have this discussion because OPML 2.0 is being spec'd.
The <head> section in the spec includes a <ownerId> that is defined thusly:
[T]he http address of a web page that containsan HTMLa form that allows a human reader to communicate with the author of the document via email or other means.
 The line was long (click to enlarge) |
The is a "contact me" form like the ones 2idi provides for i-names and NetMesh provides for LIDs. I think Dave is anticipating some identity infrastructure that doesn't necessarily exist in a standard way yet. Since OPML 2.0 will freeze the OPML spec, this is a good time for people in the identity space to offer some input.
So, an i-name or LID contact form foots the bill for what Dave is after. We got into an interesting discussion, however, about what's missing in the current schemes. I used myself as an example. I use my i-name contact form in different contexts. I frequently get contacts from people who don't give me enough context in their message and I don't know what context they clicked on the link in and have to guess.
Dave needs the <ownerId> form so that people who collaborate on OPML can be connected through a contact form in an automatic way (that is, from the information in the OPML file). The URL of the document that the contact is linking from and the title of that document (or node in OPML) would work here.
 Dale Olds (Novell) works on the map (click to enlarge) |
Dale Olds from Novell ran a session aimed at creating a map of the open source identity space. There are notes from the session on the wiki.
This turned out to be a useful exercise in gathering information and it generated a lot of discussion. Here's a hi-res version of the whiteboard at the end of the discussion. It interesting to me how talks like this one educate people in ways that are far removed from the stated goal of the discussion.
We convened another discussion of Identity Rights Agreements. Drummond led and the interaction turned to the most concrete discussion of terms and ideas we've had yet. We mostly determined that there were two concepts duration and party (or maybe purpose) that break out like this:
| Duration | Party |
|---|---|
| use once | yourself/stated purpose |
| relationship | yourself/related purposes |
| forever | affiliates |
| others so bound | |
| anyone |
The key thing is to be simple and have the right defaults. We need to get a strawman proposal on the wiki and start hacking it out.
The closing circle (another open space thing) let people summarize the day and say things to the entire group that they might not have wanted or been able to say in the smaller gatherings. Some were encouragement, others were more like anouncements.
