Re: [apps-discuss] WebFinger compromises

[Joe Gregorio <[e-mail]>]

On Wed, Oct 31, 2012 at 11:52 AM, Peter Saint-Andre <[e-mail]> wrote:
> [ +cc [e-mail] given that the spec is now an
> Internet-Draft... ]
>
> On 10/31/12 9:48 AM, Dick Hardt wrote:
>> +1 on everything.
>>
>> A simple, easy to understand spec that solves the major use cases
>> released soon is far superior to kitchen sink spec that solves all use
>> cases that is released in a year.
>>
>> JSON only (if that is not obvious, you need to write some code this decade)
>>
>> 1 round trip vs 2 round. Pick one that is simple to implement. Let's not
>> get caught up in optimization. Brad's comments below seem sane (as usual)

Agreed, +1 to everything he said.

  -joe

>>
>> -- Dick
>>
>>
>> On Oct 31, 2012, at 12:45 AM, Brad Fitzpatrick <[e-mail]
>> <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
>>
>>> To everybody who recently saw me rant about WebFinger in person
>>> recently, hello again.
>>>
>>> To everybody else, a brief summary:
>>>
>>> -- I was an early WebFinger evangelist. I remember discussing it at
>>> conferences for years before it sorta became a thing. I think I even
>>> named it?
>>>
>>> -- I added Google's WebFinger support
>>> (https://groups.google.com/group/webfinger/msg/e8df6402708841ea)
>>>
>>> -- I think it's critically important for the Internet to preserve
>>> [e-mail] <mailto:[e-mail]> hierarchical identifiers before
>>> email gets too passe and we're stuck with single-namespaced walled
>>> gardens.  It's on us to make email-looking identifiers more useful to
>>> compete with all the latest proprietary silo hotness, before the
>>> people of the internet no longer recognize them.
>>>
>>> (trying to establish that I'm a friend here)
>>>
>>> That said,
>>>
>>> -- this is the slowest moving community ever (I accept part of the
>>> blame here)
>>>
>>> -- can we please stop changing things?
>>>
>>> -- JSON, XRD, great, whatever.  But let's just pick one.  If JSON is
>>> now the hotness, let's pick *only* JSON.  Specs that say "X is
>>> required but you can maybe do Y if you want to" just reek of political
>>> compromise to gain a certain party's favor.  Look at OpenID 2.0.  (I
>>> remember being sad about those political moves too, but I had lost the
>>> energy to fight)
>>>
>>> -- My recommendation: just remove all mention of XRD from the latest
>>> WebFinger spec.  Yes, this is counter to my "please stop changing
>>> things" bullet earlier.  But WebFinger has a better chance of success
>>> if it's a simple spec.  And you're not breaking compatibility with
>>> anybody because *nobody uses WebFinger*.
>>>
>>> -- 1 round trip, 2 round trips. Don't really care. 2 round trips keeps
>>> the spec simpler and the 1st will be highly cacheable (Expires:
>>> weeks), so it's 1 round trip in practice, but I won't fight (too much)
>>> *optional* parameters in the 1st request to possibly skip the 2nd
>>> request.  It worries me, though.  I'd rather see that optimization
>>> added in a subsequent version of the spec, so all 1.0 implementations
>>> have then shown that they're capable of performing the base algorithm.
>>>  I worry that too many servers will implement the optimization and
>>> then lazy clients will become pervasive which only do one round trip,
>>> thus making the "optional" optimization now de facto required for
>>> servers.  So I'd really rather drop that from the spec too.  Let's add
>>> it only later, once it's shown to be needed.  As is, clients could
>>> even fire off two HTTP requests in parallel to reduce latency, one for
>>> host-meta and one optimistically for the presumed host-meta location
>>> in cases of big hosts that rarely change, or expired cached host-meta
>>> documents.
>>>
>>> I will continue to fight for Google's WebFinger support, but I'm not
>>> the only one losing patience.
>>>
>>> Everybody please hurry up, simplify, then hurry up.  I'll help however
>>> I can.  I'm not sure whether this was helpful.
>>>
>>> - Brad
>>>
>>> (If any of the above is offensive to my employer, I'm speaking as myself.)
>>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Peter Saint-Andre
> https://stpeter.im/
>
>



-- 
Joe Gregorio        http://bitworking.org