[Opensim-dev] Global identifiers

[diva at metaverseink.com]

Another thing related to identity that people should know, and that 
touches on what Dahlia is saying: identity does not belong to users; it 
belongs to identity services, in principle, unless those identity 
services say it otherwise in the TOS (but I can't really see how that 
would work... after all, it would be impossible for Mr. Smith to 
continue to use myworld.com/smith as identity after parting ways with 
MyWorld due to the way DNS works). If you want to own your own identity, 
then the best shot is to run your own identity service.

OpenSim is already prepared for the existence of identity services that 
are independent of any specific grid. Meaning, there's an identity 
service to which people login, but that sends the user's agents to 
worlds out there, because it's not associated with any particular world. 
Conceptually, that's how the current (HG) login service works. The best 
combo at this point would be UserAccount+UserAgent+Inventory+Asset services
(the existence of inventory upon login is sort of mandatory with the LL 
viewer)

Note to entrepreneurs: the opportunity is now here to start identity 
service businesses for virtual worlds. I can see the tag line "Confused 
about which world to sign on? Sign on with none! Get an identity with us!"

Dahlia Trimble wrote:
> Would it be possible to use just the UUID part and not tie it to a 
> specific domain? I can foresee events where a user and a 
> business/grid/domain owner/whatever make a decision to go separate ways 
> and then any other systems out there that have the global identifier 
> referenced may not be able to use it to contact that user. If only the 
> UUID were used (we already use UUIDs for many diverse applications and 
> the context implies the specific usage) it could be similar to a cell 
> phone number where a user can take it from carrier to carrier. Resolving 
> the current user domain would need to be worked out but several methods 
> might be considered from a P2P network of resolvers to one or more 
> central authorities, and/or simply storing it in a cache in local 
> installations when the UUID is first used.
> 
> If we only use the UUID part then it may have some backward 
> compatibility with existing user UUIDs used to identify content creators.
> 
> On Sat, Aug 28, 2010 at 11:26 AM, <diva at metaverseink.com 
> <mailto:diva at metaverseink.com>> wrote:
> 
>     I'm about to introduce global identifiers, so that I can make
>     friends and IM work on the hypergrid, and would like feedback on the
>     best form of these identifiers. Here are some options:
> 
>     http://myworld.com:8002/7c4450fc-aeaf-468d-b238-d52955dc868b
> 
>     myworld.com:8002/7c4450fc-aeaf-468d-b238-d52955dc868b
>     <http://myworld.com:8002/7c4450fc-aeaf-468d-b238-d52955dc868b>
> 
>     http://myworld.com:8002/user/7c4450fc-aeaf-468d-b238-d52955dc868b
> 
>     7c4450fc-aeaf-468d-b238-d52955dc868b at myworld.com:8002
>     <http://7c4450fc-aeaf-468d-b238-d52955dc868b@myworld.com:8002>
> 
>     ...
> 
>     In this particular case (for friends and IM) we're dealing with user
>     accounts, but the issue is broader than that. Whatever form we
>     choose should be applicable to all sorts of resources.
> 
>     My preference is to use a URI, according to the spec of URIs
>     (http://www.w3.org/Addressing/URL/uri-spec.html). The question is:
>     should we add additional specifications on these URIs? Like using
>     the path /user/ for user accounts, etc.
> 
>     Thoughts?
> 
>     Thanks.
>     Diva / Crista
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