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Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me

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Re: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me

#71

Post by black_puppydog »

virtualritz wrote: post #60

I recently got introduced to a company called Polypoly. They are working on exactly the same, in the EU. They have an interesting setup as a collective. Users of the software automatically become members of the collective. The website talks of automatic partake in economic success. Curiously they also use the idea of self-hosted pods to hold the users private data and they even use the term 'pod' for this. When the f…

Wow I love-hate those lopsided headlines. Although they do distract from the content...

Re: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me

#72

Post by Vinnl »

bluesign wrote: post #57
fuubi wrote: post #45

I am very excited about Solid. That motivated me to write my thesis about a decentralised wiki, where Solid is its foundation. For further information, you can have a look at my work journal ( https://ma.parrillo.eu ).

Great to see someone with experience with Solid. I have few questions, maybe you can answer. I saw on your blog about wiki data model example. Let's say you built a Solid app around that one. Put on a website like superwiki.com, allowing users to create their wiki pages. Now then later, wikipedia came to scene, published another data model, and made another Solid app, put on wikipedia.org. - How will I move let's say…

> How will I move let's say my data from superwiki to wikipedia?

Your data is not on superwiki, but on your Pod. So you can connect Wikipedia to your Pod, see your data in their app, but it's still in your Pod, rather than having been moved.

> Does wikipedia then have to somehow implement some import functionality?

As follows from the previous answer: no, because the data never moves to Wikipedia. However:

> Or Solid has to have a protocol (standard) for wiki entries?

No, apps define their own data model, so Wikipedia will have to understand Superwiki's data model. Ideally, they agree on a common standard for this, using that standardisation either as a selling point or as a way to comply with future regulations. But of course, an app could also just unilaterally imitate the other's data model, just like e.g. browsers imitated each others' extension API or bookmarks data model.

(Disclosure: I also work for Inrupt, but views are my own.)

Re: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me

#73

Post by rohan1024 »

virtualritz wrote: post #60

I recently got introduced to a company called Polypoly. They are working on exactly the same, in the EU. They have an interesting setup as a collective. Users of the software automatically become members of the collective. The website talks of automatic partake in economic success. Curiously they also use the idea of self-hosted pods to hold the users private data and they even use the term 'pod' for this. When the f…

We humans have a tendency where: we invent something, exploit it only to realise at later point the mess that has happened and then correct our path.

I see lot of negative comments on this thread but solid/polypoly is the beginning of that path correction for web. They might not succeed but something with the same underlying idea is going to.

Re: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me

#74

Post by patrec »

mehh wrote: post #27
TeeWEE wrote: post #22

Solid's goal is nice but its solution ia based on RDF and semantic web. Those technologies failed to take off for a web 3.0. I dont see this going to take off either. Turtle is just another syntax for RDF because XML is too verbose.... Anyway i do see a lot of value in IPFS, its solving a different problem, but it's related. It could allow for storing private data encrypted in a non centralized way, having the pinned…

I'm not sure that because Semantic Web didn't work that implies the technologies don't work. The Semantic Web isn't the technologies it was an initiative. Having said that the technologies you mentioned do have developer experience problems. Some think devs just don't understand them, which is partially true, but having a fugly toolchain doesn't help!

> It is not hard to imagine your Web-enabled microwave oven consulting the frozen-food manufacturer's Web site for optimal cooking parameters.

This is Berners-Lee being visionary about the potential of a world-wide network of computers. The problem is not just the terrible technical implementation, it's also that the vision behind all this semantic web stuff was one of soulless dorks who saw the world's population spend their days semantically marking up All The Things to get the most of their web-enabled microwaves.

Everything I have seen Berners-Lee prominently involved in sucks at every level from micro to macro. Take urls: url query strings separators conflict with html escaping, the port syntax conflicts with the IPv6 syntax (which came first) and finally urls are not even self delimiting, so Tim hatched the aesthetically compelling workaround to write them as " rel="nofollow">http://example.com>.

Re: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me

#75

Post by brongondwana »

Vinnl wrote: post #69
bluesign wrote: post #37

This kills the innovation or puts too much power to the first innovator. - if solid will dictate a protocol for data, it should cover the common denominator: so if you have your email on gmail now, lets say solid is covering basic email structure, i can move my email data to another provider, but about my filters? On other tiny stuff that gmail builds on email - if i invent something new in a chat app, lets say stick…

> but about my filters? On other tiny stuff that gmail builds on email All that is data, so those, too, could be stored in your Pod and brought along with you. > Should I ask solid to update protocol for this No, interoperability can be achieved through your data model, which is yours to decide - Solid doesn't dictate the shape of your data. But as you noted, only competing apps using the same data model will be inte…

Speaking of email in particular, I'd be keen to chat to you lot about the JMAP protocol, which is hoping to provide some of the "modern data model" around email (and we're now working on Calendars)

Re: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me

#76

Post by andretti1977 »

Sorry but what happens when i grant access to a company? It will collect the data i granted access to and then resell them to other companies and buy data from other firms too so my data will be spread around exactly as now so even if i like the idea, what's the advantage? Am i missing something?

Re: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me

#77

Post by frou_dh »

threatofrain wrote: post #29
shubham001 wrote: post #19

There is a similar project by Rob Pike called Upspin. It is pretty interesting. That also looked very promising. https://upspin.io/

Is it still a living living (2x for emphasis) project? It was announced years ago and since then there hasn't been much word.

Commit activity suggests it's been in maintenance mode for approx 2 years.

Adoption was probably low, despite it receiving some initial hype, particularly inside the Go community.

Re: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me

#78

Post by theK »

andretti1977 wrote: post #76

Sorry but what happens when i grant access to a company? It will collect the data i granted access to and then resell them to other companies and buy data from other firms too so my data will be spread around exactly as now so even if i like the idea, what's the advantage? Am i missing something?

Well for one your data lives in a place where you can govern it. Nowadays your data lives in all places you use (Facebook, Gmail, Twitter). Ever tried taking stock of your data lately? It can take weeks to do it for all services and importing the exports into a self hosted alternative is nigh impossible.

Still one risk I am seeing is that services might still want to intern you once you have given than access to your data. EG: a Foto app needs access to your photos which you grant but also introduces social commenting features which don’t trickle back into your pod. So you as a consumer are still incentivized to use the proprietary service. Web Giants 1 Solid 0

EDIT: I am still supporting the idea of getting SOLID out to the masses though!

Re: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me

#79

Post by bluesign »

Vinnl wrote: post #72
bluesign wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great to see someone with experience with Solid. I have few questions, maybe you can answer. I saw on your blog about wiki data model example. Let's say you built a Solid app around that one. Put on a website like superwiki.com, allowing users to create their wiki pages. Now then later, wikipedia came to scene, published another data model, and made another Solid app, put on wikipedia.org. - How will I move let's say…

> How will I move let's say my data from superwiki to wikipedia? Your data is not on superwiki, but on your Pod. So you can connect Wikipedia to your Pod, see your data in their app, but it's still in your Pod, rather than having been moved. > Does wikipedia then have to somehow implement some import functionality? As follows from the previous answer: no, because the data never moves to Wikipedia. However: > Or Solid…

I understand data is not moving but if data structures are different there has to be some kinda merge or cloning of the data.

So basically I am at Wikipedia and Superwiki's mercy for interoperability.

What is the value of having(hosting my own data) if I cannot move.

"unilaterally imitate the other's data model" sounds good at the beginning, but what will happen when superwiki is constantly evolving its data structure, and wikipedia also at the same time developing features. And now imagine this with N Actors instead of 2.

Regulations maybe can help on basic data , but for extended data there will be a lot of conflict. (ex: I can move my friend list, but can't move let's say special data I assigned to them in one app)

Re: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me

#80

Post by Vinnl »

kick wrote: post #7
naner wrote: post #2

Projects like this never seem to pan out. It solves a problem people should care about but most aren't motivated to act on.

It doesn't actually solve the problem, which is something you would have imagined they would have thought out from the beginning. They basically admit, outright, that their proposed solution doesn't solve the problem: The ideal would be for this to be completely distributed. Everyone's pod would be on a computer they own, running on their network. But that's not how it's likely to be in real life. Just as you can the…

Note that Solid certainly doesn't dictate you should keep all your data together. For example, it is perfectly possible to have e.g. a 'work' Pod and a 'personal' Pod. Additionally, data within a single Pod need not necessarily be physically stored together.

But yes, Solid doesn't solve all problems, and I don't think it even solves (or will solve) one problem by itself. But I certainly believe it can be part of a solution, and I believe even more strongly that we desperately need one, which is why I'm happy we're at least trying.

(Disclosure: I also work for Inrupt, but views are my own.)

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