SolidOS Team Meeting

# SolidOS Team Meeting * Date: 10.04.2023 18:00 (UTC+2) * Call: [https://meet.jit.si/solid-operating-system](https://meet.jit.si/solid-operating-system) * [Previous meeting link]() * [Next meeting link]() * Chat: [https://gitter.im/solidos/solidos](https://gitter.im/solidos/solidos) * Repository: [https://github.com/solidos/solidos](https://github.com/solidos/solidos) * Meetings home: [https://solidos.solidcommunity.net/public/SolidOS%20team%20meetings/](https://solidos.solidcommunity.net/public/SolidOS%20team%20meetings/) ---- ## Present attendees * Timea, Tim, Aad, Jon, Angelo, Noel, Rahul, Alain, Jeff ### Scribes * Jon, Aad, --- ## Topics ### Round Table #### Noel Has been working on [framework for making apps](https://aerogel.js.org). Will try to release a video with a demo soon (check next week). #### Angelo Finished search feature in PodOS, can do a demo in tech topics #### Aad Got web components working, got rdfa editor working (say-editor.com) #### Alain Nothing to report, wants to discuss new authorization from Inrupt #### Jon Working on onboarding (three pillars): - links to documentation (search and filter) - AI to answer questions about the documentation (see https://jonwilson.dev/ ) - diagram (see last week + communication in forum) Idea is to link everything together. Please try out jonwilson.dev :-) #### Timea Communication with Alain on updating the inrupt authentication library, new version will arrive. Angelo: what is new about the authentication library. Timea: you get an error regarding mismatch redirect URI, bug is fixed. Tim: also noticed this bug on timbl.com SolidOS repositories are on an outdated node version and should be upgraded. Related issue: https://github.com/inrupt/solid-client-authn-js/issues/2891 #### Jeff Supporting organizations doing beneficent apps, socially impactful things; speaking with potential funders #### Rahul Need help on: 1) content negotiation when making a middleware for PREP, 2) made an official proposal for [Solid-PREP](https://github.com/solid/specification/issues/580). Please Support! #### Tim Suggested a hackathon project converting Slack to Solid, people are working on it, need to jump back in and get involved; working on a couple of design issues: 1) pretty printing (a lot of pushback against it in Solid)--when you serialize in ttl, it should be nice looking, it's a good dev experience, has only got the abstract so far: - https://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Pretty.html Also working on N3 patch to Rdflib, we should create an issue to use N3 patch instead of Sparql update. Alain: NSS uses n3 patch. What is the exact problem? Jeff: Problem is in UpdateManager, this sends a SPARQL update. Our update manager does not send N3 Patch. Tim: Should be a simple fix Aad: is this a problem? Tim: Server only supports N3 Patch Jeff: Sparql Update is not part of the spec anymore Noel: Was this ever in there? Tim: At some point, perhaps documented elsewhere. Noel: maybe it was documented somewhere but not in solid spec, needs to be documented in solid spec Alain: Supports Noel. No one is managing rdflib updates. Alain handles bug corrections but rdflib itself is not evolving. Tim: somebody needs to own it. Alain: (regarding rdflib) seems to be blocked, several issues pending. Aad: Share link again? Could have some ppl look at it and see if they want to pick it up. Tim: Not just Rdf, also the fetch and update manager; fairly valuable, because you can get useful functions. Looking at the issues, there are 209, high-level, philosophical issues. Alain: the problem is I've been out of doing real work, try to update issues for next mtg, next week, so we can discuss. To do something, Angelo and Alain will need to work on some bugs. Read the book "tomorrow, tomorrow, and tomorrow", about writing a game. ### Main topics No updates. ### Technical topics #### PodOS search & ontologies Demo by Angelo. Invented his own convention to do this, "Private Label Index", privatelabelindex.ttl. This makes things in pod findable. Would like feedback about usefulness and the technical solution. Should he invent his own vocab, could it be addded to Solid terms vocab.\ Tim: question, are you labeling your own things? what if you have an archive of solid chat--would you index the mesgs? Angelo: very good question, built the index manually now, needs to create a solution. maybe build a script and index everything in pod. maybe anything that has a label. Chat msg has text content, but not necessarily a label. Tim: when I'm looking for somehting in chat, I use grep. searching through email archives, for ex, on w3c. Angelo: It depends on what you're searching Tim: thinking of indexing each Matrix room, separate for each chat, basically. There may be 100 chat channels, it would be nice to select 3, for example. Angelo it would be nice to have multiple indexes in your pod, and it could show what index a result comes from Tim: I bet you'll end up with a few buttons, like Github, you can search github, but there's a popup to refine your search Aad: two questions: first, from second brain perspective, being able to find notes is very valuable. the link search mechanism I have now is not great, but this is not necessarily impossible. one idealogical question, this index will become very big. Is the idea that we create indexes in the solid pod, or backend indexes that provide indexes for you as a service. Alain: Both, maybe. Very interesting question. Also, how does it compete with AI. Is it doing the same thing? Tim: Search and AI, Inrupt have done a couple of experiments giving access to your pod to an AI model. You could ask the AI about stuff in your pod, but it won't be very smart about it, bc it doesn't understand. people are hoping AI will be hyper-intelligent, but it's not there yet, bc in GMail, for example it doesn't understand what things mean. But meanwhile, being able to index things in pod is very helpful. We've executed experiments with triple pattern fragments in the past. Angelo: Wants to have a pragmatic solution that works now. Also don't want to expose private data to a centralized AI. Solid is all about options. I can do it locally, and that's what I don't, it could be enhanced by using a server (to help index and search?). Did a test with 10,000 things, and it's very performant and useable. Aad: if we can have apps and servers building the index, an agent could run as user. Angelo: yes Tim: would be interesting to have an ontology for indexing pod Angelo: regarding vocab, any suggestions. Tim: you don't want to create a whole new thing for PodOS. Process, create PR for github repo, and ping someone with access. Tim: what about public label index? Angelo: has a public label index, but hasn't implemented it yet in podos; could have multiple indexes for multiple pods, with descriptions; it's all rdf, so will probably put an rdf label. Noel: re vocabularly, when you implement a feature, do you tag the release? [jon: not sure I understood the question] Angelo: [note from jon: didn't get the answer ] Noel: [explaining the context of the question] Tim: when you have the idea about vocab, right now, put it in the ontology so other ppl can see it and discuss it Angelo: I think that would be too much, 10 changes or more Noel: in my case, I opened a PR about vocab 6 months before, but it was never met, so I went with my own Tim: You need to ping the right person Noel: my opinion, don't release code for prod with vocab that doesn't exist Angelo and Tim agree. Alain: we need new process to approve new vocabularly. Should SolidOS be in charge? Not clear who is in charge. Tim: Basically anyone in Solid Team. From an operational point of view, someone on the Solid Team should be able tto help you get it done. Noel: Maybe the question is, who has the rights in Github to approve? Aad: Is there a problem with using our own terms? When building, we can have autonomy, and in the future, it can be updated Tim: It would be easier to use existing ontology. Aad: If we can get it merged. Tim: If we can't get it merged, we fix that problem. (More discussion about problem with process of submitting, reviewing, merging PR's) Noel: I don't know who I need to ping--I thought I just had to open PR: https://github.com/solid/vocab/pull/69 Tim: in Github, when you open PR, you need to encourage people to review and merge it. This process was written up a long time ago. So many PR's, very hard to keep track. Alain: It seems like no one wants to take responsibility to approve. Problem with large organization. Also problem with refusal. Timea: It was approved, actually by Jackson, but not merged. Tim: For the spec, Sarven would do the mergin, but had a hard time getting ppl to review. Aad: We use Angelo's proposed term to iron out the kinks in the process. Timea: I don't think it's a mistake to host your own vocab. Noel: Agree. Main point, is that the URL exists, doesn't give 404. Jeff: What about in-app vocab? Can I use a relative URL? Aad: If a term is defined only in your app, isn't that the point (Jon: not sure I got this corrcet?) Timea: [Jon: I missed this comment] Jeff: what about allowing users to create things? #### Danswer for Solid (link to test it posted in chat) Jon gives demo of Danswer. Aad => Jon -- Docs for Developers - Apress 2021 -- lays down approaches for informing developers. #### Chat append --- This template is based on the [W3C meeting template](https://github.com/solid/specification/blob/main/meetings/template.md) [Code of conduct](https://github.com/solid/process/blob/main/code-of-conduct.md)