Social Web Incubator Group Charter

The mission of the Social Web Incubator Group, part of the Incubator Activity, is to explore the development of open standards for social data portability built on existing W3C standards and standards developed by the community, and to promote these solutions within the W3C.

Join the Social Web Incubator Group.

End date	31 February 20009
Confidentiality	Proceedings are public
Initial Chairs	Dan Brickley (ASemantics) Harry Halpin (University of Edinburgh)
Initiating Members	University of Edinburgh Talis DERI Galway ASemantics
Usual Meeting Schedule	Teleconferences: Monthly Face-to-face: Once Annually

Scope

To explore how existing standards can help build the social web and to determine what new standard work should be done. In particular, the main focus will be insuring social networking data portability can be built on open W3C standards and existing deployed APIs as deployed by vendors and the community. The group will work to promote the work of other non-W3C groups, such as the Data Portability Group, within the W3C. The group will survey the needs of users of social web sites, and propose use-cases for social data portability to address these needs. The group will determine if these use-cases can be built on top of the Semantic Web standards and help determine what other standards, such as authentication standards, are needed. If possible, technical solutions for both users and developers will be suggested, assessing if further work needs to be done to update existing or generate open standards for social data portability in order to bring the Social Web into reality.

Deliverables

A use-case document that describes use-cases that address already existing needs of users that require social data portability, and determination of how existing W3C standards can and can not be used to help such work.
A report that describes the work done by the XG, including both the advantages and disadvantages of current open standards and APIs currently used by social web sites.
If necessary, a proposal for a future standard or standards work to be done by a Working Group.

Related Work

W3C Groups

HTML 5 Working Group: Proposed solutions could take advantage of HTML 5 development.

Policy Language Interest Group: Compatibility with rules to define policy could be useful.

Web Security Context Working Group: Assure feedback on whatever security measures are proposed from the user-end.

Ubiquitous Web Applications Activity: Co-ordinate with their work on sharing contacts among mobile devices

Semantic Web Activity: To explore the usage of RDF and rules in portability and profile management.

SPARQL: Possibly use them to query multiple sources of data via JSON and RDF.

GRDDL: A standardized low-cost deployment solutions for RDF and XML

External Groups

openSocial API: Compatibility with openSocial and members of the openSocial Alliance is a goal.

Facebook API: Compatibility with Facebook is a goal.

Data Portability Group: The Data Portability Group already has a high amount of activity in the same area, so compatibility and consultation with this group is of utmost importance.

OpenID: OpenID allows a decentralized identity standard that would be useful to assure the data portability remains authenticated.

SAML: SAML is an XML-based identity standard that could also assure data portability remains authenticated.

Microformats: XFN (XHTML Friends Network) and other microformats are very relevant to this work.

The FOAF Project: As the first networking data portability effort, compatibility will be a goal.

SIOC: As a comprehensive social data portability effort, compatibility will be a goal.

Communication

This group primarily conducts its work on the public mailing list public-xg-socialweb@w3.org (archive) . The group's Member-only list is member-xg-socialweb@w3.org (archive) In an effort to minimize costs, face to face meetings will be co-located with other meetings that a significant number of participants are attending. Regular meetings will be held monthly using the W3C's Zakim telephone/IRC facility. The mailing lists will be a primary part of the communication both internally and externally. If needed, a wiki able to be accessible and editable by all can also be maintained, and a blog could be maintained in order to let others be easily informed about the progress of the group.

Information about the group (deliverables, participants, face-to-face meetings, teleconferences, etc.) is available from the Social Web Incubator Group home page.

Decision Policy

As explained in the Process Document (section 3.3), this group will seek to make decisions when there is consensus. When the Chair puts a question and observes dissent, after due consideration of different opinions, the Chair should record a decision (possibly after a formal vote) and any objections, and move on.

This charter is written in accordance with Section 3.4, Votes of the W3C Process Document and includes no voting procedures beyond what the Process Document requires.

Patent Policy

This Incubator Group provides an opportunity to share perspectives on the topic addressed by this charter. W3C reminds Incubator Group participants of their obligation to comply with patent disclosure obligations as set out in Section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy. While the Incubator Group does not produce Recommendation-track documents, when Incubator Group participants review Recommendation-track specifications from Working Groups, the patent disclosure obligations do apply.

Incubator Groups have as a goal to produce work that can be implemented on a Royalty Free basis, as defined in the W3C Patent Policy.

Participants agree to offer patent licenses according to the W3C Royalty-Free licensing requirements described in Section 5 of the W3C Patent Policy for any portions of the XG Reports produced by this XG that are subsequently incorporated into a W3C Recommendation produced by a Working Group which is chartered to take the XG Report as an input. This licensing commitment may not be revoked but may be modified through the Exclusion process defined in Section 4 of the Patent Policy.

Participants in this Incubator Group wishing to exclude essential patent claims from the licensing commitment must join the Working Group created to work on the XG Report and follow the normal exclusion procedures defined by the Patent Policy. The W3C Team is responsible for notifying all Participants in this Incubator Group in the event that a new Working Group is proposed to develop a Recommendation that takes the XG Report as an input.

For more information about disclosure obligations for this group, please see the W3C Patent Policy Implementation.

About this Charter

This charter for the Social Web Incubator Group has been created according to the Incubator Group Procedures documentation. In the event of a conflict between this document or the provisions of any charter and the W3C Process, the W3C Process shall take precedence.

Harry Halpin, University of Edinburgh (@@ADD OTHERS)

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