>Back in January on NGC4LIB I proposed doing this, a universal ID system to >use when browsing, using the FOAF structure. I got back answers that told >me they were not getting the concept. This discussion on OpenID is very >interesting and I hope this can be made to work.
Hi Steven, Tim Berners-Lee [1], among others, have brought up FOAF (Friend-Of-A-Friend) in connection to OpenID as a way to establish trust networks. You could argue that the attributes support in shibboleth could accomplish the same thing, but the difference might be that people like Sir Tim are seeing some synergy in OpenID and FOAF whereas shibboleth doesn't seem to capture the attention of the mainstream web folks. Not that FOAF is without its own detractors, but here's a variation of a syntax I have seen for indicating trust, in this case, in Ed Summers' Ruby knowledge (the syntax is a little dated but you get the idea). Extend this to indicate, for example, a fondness for the music of Howlin' Wolf, or some other kind of preference information, and creating systems that respond dynamically to user background and preferences might be possible : <rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"; xmlns:rdfs="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#"; xmlns:foaf="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/"; xmlns:trust="http://www.perceive.net/schemas/20020725/trust#";> <foaf:Person> <trust:trustsHighly> <foaf:Person rdf:about="#edsu"> <rdfs:subject rdf:resource=" http://dmoz.org/Computers/Programming/Languages/Ruby/"; /> </foaf:Person> </trust:trustsHighly> </foaf:Person> </rdf:RDF> OpenID implementations may already have a little plumbing for this kind of thing with "personas" but it still comes back to how much a service is willing to accept from a particular OpenID provider. I would be curious whether the above kind of syntax could fit into the Yadis system used by OpenID because I am very unclear how FOAF and OpenID could/should intersect. There is also talk about OpenID support being built into browsers, things would get really interesting if the web browser started to broadcast an OpenID to web services. art --- 1. http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/node/170
