What is the scope of this project?

[larry]

Continuing the discussion from Blockchain Name System documentation/wiki:

Blockchain Name System documentation/wiki

It seems that the namespace discussion i.e. about Blockchain Name System, is separate from the profile schema discussion, since that information resides outside of the blockchain. What is the reason for mixing these two discussions together? Seems a bit like discussing DNS and HTML in the same place - it is fine if the topic is websites, but strange if the topic is DNS. Is this analogy accurate?

I agree. I think we have a scope problem. I actually thought Passcard was the namespace (currently implemented on Namecoin) and BNS was the profile schema/resolver.

I think we need better separation of concerns.

Each of these could be discrete systems/specs:

1. Name with pointer to identity info
2. Identity info
3. Mechanism to prove ownership of the name

Blockchain Name System documentation/wiki

We worked on making the underlying identity and naming protocol agnostic of the identities of users/people. As you’ll see in the docs, the concepts and schema specific to passcards can be found under “identities for people”. You’ll also notice a section called “identities for digital media”, under which there’s a link to Mine’s writeup on canonical content identifiers.

After our lengthy discussion about renaming Openname to Passcard and Onename press release announcing Passcard, we now find ourselves chatting on namesystem.info and with a github named namesystem. It’s confusing.

Passcard is already a much better gravatar - a single way for end users to describe and update their identity. Add user friendly authentication to the mix and I think it’s a no brainer for services to adopt this.

All of this other stuff:

“digital media (what Mine is working on), stores, websites, places, physical products, etc.”

Distracts from the message & complicates discussions and development. Great if you want to attract academics and researchers who are happy spending 10 years discussing things (maybe you do?) - bad if you want to get businesses who need to ship products and end users who just want their life to be easier and more magical using Passcard.

[ktorn]

I feel the same confusion as @larry in terms of the various channels of comms (github, slack, discourse) and what discussion goes where. We could use with a clear guide.

Regarding the expansion of an identity system to organisations and other “things” I have mixed feelings. On the one hand I think it’s a great idea. Identity is not exclusive to individuals. On the other hand it does create some confusion and could open the door for a competitor who applies a single-minded focus on a single problem. I think competition is good, as long as we don’t end up with a zillion protocols that we need to integrate with.

[larry]

Regarding the expansion of an identity system to organisations and other “things” I have mixed feelings. On the one hand I think it’s a great idea. Identity is not exclusive to individuals.

The shiny multifaceted tech problem of an expanded identity system for everything excites the academic, engineer, taxonomist guy in me.

On the other hand it does create some confusion and could open the door for a competitor who applies a single-minded focus on a single problem. I think competition is good, as long as we don’t end up with a zillion protocols that we need to integrate with.

The business, evangelist guy in me wants something with a clear message, awesome value proposition and defined target audience…something we can rave to people about, something we can ship.

[ryan]

I think of passcard as becoming a sub-movement/community within the blockchain name system, likely remaining the biggest one.

As a corollary, DNS is used for website domains, but it’s also used for mail records, and people tried using it for personal profile pages at one point (subtly different than personal websites) but the pricing was too high for it.

The people working on passcards can have their own conversations on here that are specific to passcards. Likewise people working on domains can have conversations here too. And people working on digital media can have conversations on here too.

Think about this: Blockstore is a component of the blockchain name system but it’s not a component of passcard. I’d like for us to be able to use this community as a home for discussing Blockstore as well.

OpenBazaar and Mine are perfect examples of open projects that are thinking of using blockstore and could have their own namespace and thus identity type within the system.

Larry, I understand your concerns about not being focused with messaging, but I think there are ways to overcome this and communicate properly.

Side note: it looks like Discourse supports groups. I’m not sure how that works but that could be something useful to toy around with.

[guylepage3]

On the other hand it does create some confusion and could open the door for a competitor who applies a single-minded focus on a single problem. I think competition is good, as long as we don’t end up with a zillion protocols that we need to integrate with.

The business, evangelist guy in me wants something with a clear message, awesome value proposition and defined target audience…something we can rave to people about, something we can ship.

The communcations are something, I feel, we will solve as more and more products/services are developed using BNS. I also feel there needs to be a separation between Passcard and BNS. One is solely developer facing and the other involves consumers as well as developers. But again, I am confident we will develop better communications as the community grows. Do we have the communications nailed today? No. But it’s our initial position.

Also, as services and products such as Passcard offer a clearer value prop, I feel word will begin to spread and as a result we should become a clear winner in the space.