Re: [apps-discuss] [OAUTH-WG] Web Finger vs. Simple Web Discovery (SWD)

[John Panzer <[e-mail]>]

Last time I looked, WF takes a URI as input.  A mailto: URI is a URI.  If
someone wants to provide a look up by email address service, WF works
fine.  It just accepts more than email addresses.

What am I missing?
On Apr 18, 2012 3:05 AM, "Melvin Carvalho" <[e-mail]> wrote:

>
>
> On 18 April 2012 01:59, Paul E. Jones <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
>> Melvin,****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> On “acct:”…****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Humans will usually interchange an acct URI and mailto URI, probably
>> never using either scheme directly in practice.  That’s natural and
>> expected, if not desired.  The intent is that we define something that
>> looks like an email ID, but it’s not an email ID.  Some services, perhaps
>> Twitter being most notable, do no use email addresses.  Yet, you might have
>> an account there.  So, [e-mail] might be used by humans and
>> automated systems would convert that to acct:[e-mail].  It would
>> not be appropriate to use mailto: since it’s not an email ID.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> We did have a lot of debate about the use of “acct”.  If you query my
>> WebFinger server, you’ll see that it will work without “acct:” prefixed, as
>> that was a suggestion made a year or so ago.  It will inspect the input and
>> if it looks like an acct URI, it will assume it is.  The “acct” URI will be
>> returned as an alias.  However, we should always use some kind of URI
>> scheme to remove the guesswork.  The client can often make a very good
>> guess as to whether it’s looking for a user account or something else.  So,
>> let it tell the server what it is looking for explicitly.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> We need a URI scheme, because WebFinger can be used to discover all kinds
>> of information related to a given domain, not only user information.  It
>> can be used to query information about any URI, be that a web page, a user
>> account, device on the network, etc.  If we got rid of “acct”, then we
>> would have a system where we sometimes use a URI scheme and sometimes we do
>> not.  Results might be inconsistent, as the server may not make the right
>> guess, unless we agreed that absence of a scheme defaults to “acct:”.
>> However, I see no reason for the client to be so lazy to not include
>> “acct:”.  The user might (and probably will) exclude it, but the client
>> code can add it.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> At this point, I’d argue the “train has left the station” on “acct”,
>> too.  The current WebFinger spec exists (in part) to formally document that
>> which has adopted; it’s not a new thing.
>>
>
>
> Paul, thank you for your explanation on lookup based on acct: (WebFinger)
> vs lookup based on mailto: (SWD).
>
> I think this is a major difference.
>
> The original WebFinger proposal was *supposed* to give extra information
> about an email address.
>
> From wikipedia:
>
> "WebFinger is an Internet protocol that aims to provide information about
> people by their* E-mail addresses*."
>
> From webfinger.org:
>
> "Put your *email address* into the box above, click the button"
>
> From google code (the top hit on google):
>
> "making *email addresses* readable again"
>
> And perhaps most importantly from the spec, the first example:
>
> "Assume you receive an *email *from Bob..."
>
> However only SWD here is doing email based discovery (mailto:).
> WebFinger *now* doing acct: based discovery, which is a departure from the
> original use case.
>
> Im glad that some people have voiced support for acct:, but I still
> believe that to be a minority.  I agree, that the new acct: scheme should
> for in another document, rather than shoe horned into an email based
> discovery system.
>
> IMHO, it's better to solve one problem (ie email based discovery) simply
> and well, than to half solve two problems (ie a new uri scheme for
> identity) in a single attempt.
>
>
>> ****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Paul****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> A couple of points:
>>
>> 1. JSON
>> =======
>>
>> I think at the time webfinger was created in 2009, XML was the de facto
>> serialization, used in AJAX, SOAP and many other systems.  Today I'm
>> hearing more and more, that both developers and publishers, want to work
>> with JSON, rather than, having to support both xml and json.  Content
>> negotiation also confuses some publishers.  In my view, this is a great
>> simplification that webfinger can learn from SWD.
>>
>> 2. acct: scheme
>> =============
>>
>> The acct: URI scheme has not proved popular, imho, and has added a layer
>> of complexity and confusion.  How do we get from acct: to mailto:?  When
>> should you use acct: and when mailto: (the spec says acct:user@host may
>> be different from mailto:user@host).  What about the forms.  How about
>> linked data ecosystems that want to cross link identifiers, do they now
>> have to consider both cases?
>>
>> From the original post introducing acct:
>>
>> "I don’t expect everyone to like this idea. I wish I could say I love it,
>> but I am simply content with it."
>>
>> I dont know of anyone in the community (and correct me if this has
>> changed) that really loves acct:, or perhaps even likes the acct: idea.
>> SWD has shown you can do discovery without acct: and I think that's a big
>> plus.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> One final side note is that this almost becomes trivial when you can do
>> SPARQL queries.  "void" is already registered by the W3C with IANA in
>> .well-known in order to discover SPARQL endpoints.  It may be overkill in
>> some people's eyes, but Linked Data (which predates webfinger),
>> particularly newer things like JSON LD, are a lot bigger than they were in
>> 2009.  In a few years it may become the definitive discovery mechanism
>> anyway.****
>>
>
>
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