WebID is a standard being developped at the W3C, which could be used in relation to some Debian Web services.

Potential uses

Identification of Debian contributors

Each Debian contributor may have a WebID compatible profile published by some Debian service.

For instance, Debian project members are listed by db.debian.org, so the same information could be provided in a standard way on such a service.

Some experiment are being conducted in this area :

See also the contributors.debian.org project, which intends to provide a profile for Debian contributors.

Interlinking contributor profiles with other meta-data

WebIDs profiles being Linked Data, they can be integrated with other meta-data in RDF, like the PTS'.

See : http://www-public.telecom-sudparis.eu/~berger_o/weblog/2013/06/06/new-paper-authoritative-linked-data-descriptions-of-debian-source-packages-using-adms-sw-accepted-at-oss-2013/

Using WebID+TLS for authentication on Web services

Combining WebID with client TLS certs, could be a mean for allowing authentication to Debian Web services.

The WebID+TLS specs are being worked on at the W3C. See http://www.w3.org/wiki/WebID#What_is_the_WebID_Authentication_Protocol.3F for details.

It could be an alternative to other means being used : DebianSingleSignOn

Discussion

Interested by the use of WebID for the Debian project ? Contact us on : debwebid-discuss@lists.alioth.debian.org (archives : http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/debwebid-discuss/).

See also recordings of the WebID BoF at Debconf 13


See also : ContributorsInformationSources