Subject: [webfinger] Revised WebFinger spec (draft -15)

From: "Paul E. Jones" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Jul 2013 00:37:21 -0400

Folks,

Having reviewed the thread below and taken other input into consideration, I
revised the WebFinger document and it now appears as draft -15.

Here's a summary of changes and responses on some comments made:

* Most significantly, I removed all of the contentious examples.  I kept
  the OpenID Connect example and brought over an "http" example from RFC
6415.
  Neither should be contentious, since the first is a concrete example
  from OpenID and the second is an example that existed already in an RFC.
  No example email auto config, device: URI, or locating a blog given an
email
  Address.  

* I did not change the language to say that WF is a framework.  It is a
protocol
  with a well-defined syntax, not unlike HTTP. What one requests and what
  payload, like HTTP, is really outside the scope of the spec.  That said,
  Section 1 states that applications that desire to use WF must specify
  "properties, titles, and link relation types that are appropriate for the
  application".  Is this sufficient to address this concern?

* There was a suggestion to define a "rel" registry.  Such a registry
  already exists: http://www.iana.org/assignments/link-relations/

* Clarified that some server responses may have either an empty links array
  or no links array.  (No change in behavior, but this clarification was
  requested.)

* I removed text in section 4.5 that recommends the use of the acct URI
  scheme.  Applications / usage specifications will indicate what scheme
  to use and we do not need to dance around this issue in the protocol spec.

* A few minor edits (e.g., references and word choice)

You can find the current text here:
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-appsawg-webfinger-15

Paul

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From: Barry Leiba <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Jul 2013 10:59:35 -0400

> revised the WebFinger document and it now appears as draft -15.

Great.  How do you think this version applies to the DISCUSS positions
from Pete and Stephen?  What are the next steps?

Barry

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From: "Paul E. Jones" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 5 Jul 2013 15:05:31 -0400

Barry,

> from Pete and Stephen?  What are the next steps?

I hope this will address some of the "semantic gap" concerns Pete raised.
By removing the example of locating a blog given an email address and,
through the process, using an acct URI, we removed that "leap" taken from
the document entirely.

Related to that, there were questions raised about what URI one would use
(e.g., acct URI or http or other).  WF never intended to nail that down
concretely, but there was a preference for acct when querying user accounts.
We removed the wording related to the acct URI, which folks seemed to
prefer.  The URI one would use depends on the particular application.  It
seemed folks were agreeable to making that change.

I hope that will close Peter's concern noted here:
http://trac.tools.ietf.org/wg/appsawg/trac/ticket/12
(Which is echoed in his DISCUSS item.)

These items should be non-issues now since we removed the examples entirely:
http://trac.tools.ietf.org/wg/appsawg/trac/ticket/13
http://trac.tools.ietf.org/wg/appsawg/trac/ticket/14
http://trac.tools.ietf.org/wg/appsawg/trac/ticket/15

Stephen's comments were mostly related to privacy.  None of the changes made
were related to privacy, but we have enough comments about privacy to nearly
scare a person into not wanting to use WF.  (Really, I do think it's
stronger wording than it should be, but people wanted to make it strong, I
guess.)  What I need are specific comments.

He has a number of comments, but I'm not sure which ones he might still
considers to be an issue.  I've copied him to this thread for input.  If he
could re-visit his comments and see which ones are still an issue, that
would be great.

Paul

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From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Jul 2013 22:26:25 +0200

On Thu, Jul 04, 2013 at 12:37:21AM -0400,
 Paul E. Jones <[email-masked]> wrote 
 a message of 47 lines which said:

> I revised the WebFinger document and it now appears as draft -15.

I studied it and, IMHO, it addresses the concerns I've raised here. I
find the changes quite sensible and consistent.

Editorial note: 

> suppose a mail client was configured to automatically perform a
> WebFinger query as discussed in the example in Section 3.1.

Should probably be deleted since it refers to an example which no
longer exists.

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From: "Paul E. Jones" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Jul 2013 16:57:18 -0400

Stephane,

> Should probably be deleted since it refers to an example which no

Should we delete the entire paragraph or just the words "as discussed in the
example in Section 3.1".  I would assume the words of caution related to
automated processing might still be appreciated.

I also noted in section 4.3, there is a reference to a deleted example, too.
This smaller example seems it is OK, but I'll remove the reference and
cleanup the text a little.

Paul