Yadis Standardization

[Recordon, David]

Since this idea first surfaced at this last Internet Identity Workshop,
I've done some thinking about it.  I agree with Johannes that this would
be A Good Thing, though do realize that some people may have concerns
with it.  Obviously Johannes wouldn't propose this to the community if
we didn't think this was the right thing to do.  None of us can promise
that this is "the right thing", but many members of the XRI TC have been
involved in this community and in actively shaping Yadis as well.  In
the long run, it seems like the best, shortest, and most applicable way
to get Yadis into a standards body.

In speaking with Drummond and Gabe, it seems like Yadis would fit well
within the XRI TC and the XRI Resolution specification.  The idea is
that the spec will be taken, as it stands at 1.0 today, and incorporated
as a new section within the XRI Resolution spec.  Content/meaning
changes will not be made, since the community has worked out what Yadis
should do, but wording will be updated as the context will have changed.
i.e. not needing to reference an external spec for the XRD or redefining
terminology.

While OASIS does require a membership, starting at $250 per year for an
individual, we believe Yadis is at a state where this will not be a
large issue to members of this community.  Not only are members of the
TC easy to get a hold of, via email as well as their participation in
this community, the Yadis spec should not need to be changed.  The
combination of these two factors shouldn't require an OASIS membership
to continue growing this community and its involvement in Yadis.

All I can promise is that Johannes and I will be actively involved in
helping put Yadis into the XRI Resolution Working Draft and that all of
you will have an opportunity to comment on and provide feedback about
how this was done.  As Johannes said, let us know if you disagree and
we'll try to figure out the answers to any concerns.

--David 

-----Original Message-----
From: yadis-bounces at lists.danga.com
[mailto:yadis-bounces at lists.danga.com] On Behalf Of Johannes Ernst
Sent: Friday, May 19, 2006 11:16 PM
To: Yadis list
Subject: Yadis Standardization

There have been some conversations in the background on making Yadis 1.0
an "official" standard by a recognized standards organization.  
How important such a "blessing" is depends on who you ask, but it's
clear that there are certainly people for whom this is important.

One often-mentioned reason is that other official standards can only
reference, and build on, Yadis if it is a standard of a recognized
standards organization such as W3C, IETF, OASIS, ISO, IEEE etc. etc.

Given that Yadis uses the XRDS format (well, a subset) that was defined
in OASIS, and given that one of the methods to find the XRDS document
associated with a given identity URL is taken from OASIS as well, some
of us thought that OASIS should be the first avenue to explore.

We now have an offer on the table to incorporate Yadis, without change,
into some of the OASIS draft standards documents that are going through
the process (specifically XRI Resolution 2.0 Working Draft 11). If we
did this, Yadis would become an OASIS standard as part of that document
going through the OASIS standardization process.

 From my perspective, this would be A Good Thing.

If you think that it wouldn't, this would be an excellent time to speak
up ... if you speak up to disagree ;-), keep in mind however that
standards work is quite time consuming, something that the open- source
community is not usually equipped to do very well, and that this might
well be the most cost-effective method at our disposal ...

If I don't hear any loud screams some time really soon, I take this as
agreement that you guys in the Yadis community agree ...

[Note this is not about OpenID, just about Yadis. OpenID would be a
separate subject.]



Johannes Ernst
NetMesh Inc.