OStatus interview with Markus Sabadello

Today's OStatus interview is with Markus Sabadello. Markus will discuss the code he developed with OStatus support.

Markus, tell us a little about yourself.

Markus: I am from Vienna, Austria, and I spent the last few years working in various communities that deal with issues related to identity, privacy and personal data on the Internet. During this time, my primary work areas were the Eclipse Higgins project as well as XRI and XDI, but I have also been close to many other related projects, technologies and open protocols. More recently, I have developed a personal interest in a little-known academic field called Peace & Conflict Studies, where I find myself discovering many interesting parallels to the technological work I am doing.

Could you give us an overview of your software?

Markus: Project Danube is a collection of software components which I have developed over time. I share the ideals of moving away from a centralized online world and of "putting data back under the control of individuals". At the core of the Project Danube architecture lies what is commonly known as a "Personal Data Store", which is a data repository that is fully under the control of its owner. Once that is in place, a set of modular components can provide various identity and personal data related services on top of the Personal Data Store, in order to realize visions such as the Federated Social Web, Vendor Relationship Management or other applications that build on the core idea of putting data under the control of the individuals who own it.

What is a Personal Data Store, what are its benefits, and how can it be used?

Markus: "Personal Data Store" (PDS; sometimes also called "Service", "Server", "Locker", "Vault" etc.) is a relatively new term which originated in the Vendor Relationship Management (VRM) movement. The fundamental problem a PDS is trying to address is the fact that much of our personal data on the Internet today is stored in places we have no control over, and used in ways that are not transparent to us. A PDS gives you a single point of control over all your personal data, whether it is actually stored inside the PDS or in some external place. The PDS provides you with a web interface or dashboard for managing access authorizations to your data, reviewing and analyzing data operations, organizing your relationships with organizations and individuals, and more. Access to the personal data in your PDS is possible in a number of ways, but always subject to the permissions you grant or revoke.

Besides Project Danube, there are also other efforts to implement this concept, such as the Higgins Personal Data Service. On the business side, Mydex in the UK has recently attained a significant amount of attention by launching their Community Prototype, which involves a live test of a Personal Data Store. Participants in this prototype include a number of high profile UK governmental agencies as well as private enterprises that are all committed to restore to individuals control over the management and sharing of their personal data online. In other words, there is a huge amount of interest in this stuff.

Vendor Relationship Management (VRM) is the opposite of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in that the customer makes all the decisions regarding his/her relationship with the company. Could you expand on this a little, and explain the benefits of a Request for Proposal?

Markus: Well, in today's societies, we are heavily dependent on the companies whose services we need or want to consume. Whether we are talking about our phone company, a pizza delivery service or an online book store, it is always THEM who define the terms of service and the nature of our relationship. On the Internet, it is THEM who maintain databases with our data, and it is THEM who force us to click on "I agree" buttons with complicated legal texts, before we can do anything useful. Why shouldn't it be the other way round? Why shouldn't it be US who make companies agree to the terms of service that WE define, and why shouldn't it be US who have a database where we manage these relationships? This is what a PDS is all about. And by the way, the promise of VRM is that such a paradigm shift would actually be good for both sides, because companies can save huge amounts of money that they are today spending on maintaining customer data, which in a VRM world should instead be maintained by the customers themselves.

A Request for Proposal (RFP) is an application enabled by the VRM architecture. You formulate a request for some good or service you are interested in and willing to pay for (e.g. a new car with a very specific set of features). You also specify details about price, financing and delivery, and the means through which you are willing to be contacted. Then you simply wait for companies to make you offers. Technically, this can be realized by storing the RFP in your Personal Data Store and by giving a broker service access to it, which will invite potential vendors to make offers under the terms you specify.

You have been working towards a more Federated Social Web, with the goal of empowering the individual so that they no longer have to go through one centralized system, and instead they can interact between one another freely, or through a set of service providers. In one of your blog posts you talked about a Social VRM and how it is a sort of combination of VRM and FSW. Could you explain a little bit about what a Social VRM is and give some examples of its benefits?

Markus: Social VRM is one exciting way in which VRM and the FSW can meet. As I explained already, VRM is all about giving individuals more freedom in their relationships with companies. This freedom can be multiplied if these individuals can organize themselves in a way that makes it possible to pursue their interest together. For example, me and some of my friends may be interested in buying the same product. So why shouldn't we be able to put out a Request for Proposal (RFP) for this product, share the RFP via OStatus, and wait for a company to make us an offer, which should end up being much more attractive than if we had all looked for the product separately. This whole idea is still evolving, but the basic thought is that we as socially organized individuals will have a stronger position in the negotiation process with companies.

Why did you decide to implement social web federation?

Markus: Because decentralized social networking perfectly fits the idea of "putting data back under the control of individuals". Just like Vendor Relationship Management will give individuals more freedom in their relationships with companies, the Federated Social Web will give us more freedom in managing our relationships with each other. These are just two different sides of the same coin, and I am fascinated by the idea of merging them into a single, combined effort.

Why did you choose OStatus?

Markus: Because it's pretty clear that it is going to win the race of available protocols for doing this. Politically, status.net has done an awesome job bringing all the different projects to the table and coordinating the community. And from a technical standpoint, Ostatus is a very well thought-out stack of open protocols that I am sure will be able to satisfy all needs of emerging decentralized social networking.

What parts of the OStatus suite have you implemented?

Markus: Webfinger, LRDD, Atom, ActivityStreams, Pubsubhubbub, Salmon, Portable Contacts.

What problems did you have?

Markus: There are basically two strategies for implementing rapidly developing, open, community-driven Internet protocols such as OStatus. One strategy is to carefully read the specs, implement them, and then do interop testing with other existing implementations. The second strategy is to basically copy&paste what others are doing and proceed with trial&error until your implementation somehow "works" with some of the other implementations. Unfortunately, this second strategy is much more effective. I guess I followed a mix of the two approaches. I have to add that with the help of the OStatus community I was able to quickly resolve all the problems I came across.

How can users try out OStatus in your software? Your thoughts are important to us, and we appreciate your time.

Markus: Project Danube is being worked on all the time, but you can check out two reference deployments at http://pds.fullxri.com and http://pds.freexri.com. We are now focusing on improving the UI and on better explaining/documenting how it all works, but you should be able to sign up for an account and follow (or be followed by) users of status.net, Cliqset and other OStatus-enabled sites.

Thank you Markus for your time and we look forward to hearing from you in the future!