2010/3/25 Laurent Eschenauer <[email protected]> > On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 10:17 PM, Blaine Cook <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 24 March 2010 17:06, Sylvan Heuser <[email protected]> wrote: > >> As I see it, we have two approaches between we must decide. > >> > >> The pure P2P approach: > >> *snip* > >> > >> The network of independent servers with small user groups approach: > >> *snip* > > > > I'd second the idea that there are hybrid approaches that are readily > > possible. I think even in the hybrid case, you need a shared > > addressing space. The reason you need a simple, shared addressing > > space is so that people can add each-other on contact lists. Once you > > have that, then two people who meet at a bar or on a bus can exchange > > contact information. > > I second this. You can mix hub&spoke with P2P. In fact, this is what > we aim to do in onesocialweb and is straightforwad using XMPP. > > My identity could either be: > > Hub&spoke: [email protected] > In this case I delegate to the server the job of managing my profile, > etc... > > P2P: [email protected]/me > In this case, the work is delegated to a resource (could be a bot, my > laptop, a mobile phone..). The server only acts as a router. The good > thing with this last point is that you can use any existing XMPP > account tomorrow with OSW. And yes, you could even drop the /me part > and have XMPP Disco take care of telling the other end that your > social networking stuff is handled by a resource called /me. So it is > transparent to the user. > > Not sure how this would translate in a Webfinger/WebID world... >
+1 for shared addressing space (global identifiers) One issue with email style identifiers is that you cant natively dereference them (ie with HTTP). FingerPoint/WebFinger was invented as a work around for this limitation ( fingerpoint is the one I would personally use ). I think Jabber/XMPP have their own technique to get more data from a JID. A big advantage of FOAF / WebID, is that dereferncing the identifier is straightforward, and aligned with the Web i.e. use HTTP. This enables you to find out more information about a user with ease, and without inventing a new protocol, and you can even get back to the XMPP ID, email or even psyc ID, as well as the list of friends (which are again dereferencable) etc. For a centralised system for something with a large data center and high performance webfinger server, the email style identifier, with translation, seems reasonable. However, I think that dereferencable (HTTP) global identifiers and a decentralized systems are a great (and probably necessary) match.
