OpenProfile - in idea mode

At iCamp 2008, we not only drank beer, but also communicated very, very much. Under the influence of the epoch-making speeches of the Norwegian guys from Opera Software about the imminent death of proprietary standards, the thoughts of various social networks began to stir in my head ...

And we began to think about how to unite our efforts so that the projects would lose nothing, but at the same time they would become stronger. Some bent in their direction, they say, we will be integrators of all the Russian Internet, some waved their hands in the direction of Google , SocialGraph , FoaF , OpenID and other things that are technologically interesting and useful, but unfortunately they do not give a complete solution.

Then we thought for a very long time and by the end of the third day iCamp thought began to gradually focus and people began to agree with it.
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Problem : the need for users to repeatedly fill out their profiles on the network.

Reason : the inability or illegality of parsing sites to obtain data about the user, even if they wish.

Solution : creating a common format for exchanging user data between sites.

We decided to create such a format by inventing the codename OpenProfile . Yes, there are analogues, it may even be a matter of inventing a bicycle, but it seems to me that there is a chance to make a truly convenient, flexible and fully decentralized format. In some way, this will be a continuation of the OpenID idea, but it will not intersect with it, unless it complements it.

Since we are talking about the transfer of user login and password in one direction and his personal information to another, channel encryption is necessary. This is not a big problem, since it is usually enough to have an SSL certificate and the interaction between web servers using the https protocol.

In this case, the XML format is ideal as a storage medium. In addition, developments in the exchange of data between databases with different structures:

1. Specification and data exchange formats in heterogeneous information systems based on XML-technologies .

2. Already almost forgotten OIFML exchange format.

That, in general, is the whole ideology at the moment. On iCamp, I enlisted support in this endeavor from representatives of several young social networks, and at home I became convinced that our team is not against participating. Therefore, I quickly bought a domain and quickly put the Wiki engine there for discussion, to which I invite you.

If anyone has any thoughts on this matter, welcome in the comments or on the Wiki at oProfile.ru .