Solid: taking back the Web through decentralization

The world before the Web
was highly heterogeneous.

• exchanging information was hard
  • different hardware
  • different software
• innovation was hard
  • for which machines do we build?
  • for which operating systems do we build?

The Web strives to be universal
through independence of many factors.

• anyone can use the Web, regardless of

  hardware

  desktop

  phone

  tablet

  watch

  …

  software

  operating system

  browser

  app

  …

• developers are free to innovate
  • build for the Web
  • standards provide interoperability

The Web brings freedom of expression
to everyone across the world.

• Anyone can say anything about anything.
• We all have our own spaces,
  so we don’t have to agree.
• We can link to opinions of others
  to discuss about them.

A generation of social platforms
helped people interact and share.

The Web brings permissionless innovation
at a global scale.

• Anyone can build anything for any reason.
• You don’t need anyone’s permission
  to join the Web and launch a new idea.
  • not the case in app stores

Permissionless innovation has brought
unprecedented creativity to the world.

Like other systems at the time,
the Web was designed decentrally.

• Internet
• email
• NNTP
• …

Its novelty was universality.

The first threat to universality
were the browser wars.

• no Internet Explorer?
  • you’re out of luck!
• people needed a certain computer
  • no mobile devices
• developers depended on Microsoft’s pace
  • browsers were not very powerful

This battle was replaced by another:
the search engine wars.

• not on Google?
  • you’re out of luck!
• ranking high became more important
  than high-quality content
• the reach of your innovations
  depended on one crawler

This battle was also replaced by another:
the platform wars.

• not on Facebook?
  • you’re out of luck!
• clicks became more important
  than high-quality content
• you either compete for innovation
  with Facebook, or depend on it

The current massive centralization
hurts diversity, innovation, and choice.

• if you can build 1 API integration
  • will it be facebook.com or private-identity-provider.org?
• developers depend on centralized platforms
  for data and identity
  • …or they have to become such a platform themselves
• people lose control of their data
  and cannot easily switch to other apps
  • innovation cannot attract locked-in customers

Ironically, permissionless innovation
even allows platforms that prevent it.

The Facebook founder has no intention of
allowing anyone to build anything on his platform
that does not have his express approval.

Having profited mightily from the Web’s openness,
he has kicked away the ladder that elevated him
to his current eminence.

John Naughton, The Guardian

People choose where they store
every single piece of data they produce.

They can grant apps and people access
to very specific parts of their data.

Separating app and storage competition
drives permissionless innovation.

Solid is not a company or organisation.
Solid is not (just) software.

• Solid is an ecosystem
  • standards enable interoperability
• Solid is a movement
  • shifting the app builder mindset
• Solid is a community
  • different people, companies, and organisations

Anyone can build or host
software for Solid.

• a server at home and/or
  at your workplace
• rent server space
• use one of the
  free community servers

The Solid server acts as a data pod
that stores and guards your data.

• a regular Web server
  • with support for access control
  • with support for Linked Data
• application-agnostic
  • build any application
  • application-specific logic resides in clients
• just like your website
  • your data can be opened with any app

A typical data pod can contain
any data you create or need online.

• profile 👤
• photos 🖼
• comments 🗣
• likes 👍
• … ✨

Solid clients are browser or native apps
that read from or write to your data pod.

• you give apps permission
  • choose very precisely what they can access
• friends give you permission
  • choose very precisely what you can access
• apps deliver a unified experience
  • browse your friends’ pictures along with yours

Any app you can envision,
you can build with Solid.

• calendar 📅
• social feed 👥
• photo sharing 📸
• conference organization system 🎤
• … ✨

The Solid server and several apps exist
and are usable for developers.

• Solid server
  • store your data online with access control
  • free storage at solid.community and inrupt.net
• apps
  • data browser
  • contacts
  • photos
  • meeting organizer
  • …
• libraries
  • authentication
  • data processing
  • …

Solid is transitioning from research project
into an ecosystem backed by a start-up.

• MIT has been our home
  • initial development of server and apps
• Inrupt is accelerating development
  • open up the ecosystem for all
  • maintain common building blocks as open source
  • create tooling for developers
  • offer services and apps

We aim to bring the Solid experience
to people all over the world.

2014

start of Solid at MIT

Oct 2018

launch of Inrupt

Jan 2019

developer toolkit & common UX

early 2019

MVP of the ecosystem

today

you become involved? 😉

Decentralized apps have many back-ends. Back-ends work with many apps.

The current approach to building APIs
does not play well with decentralization.

When clients do not bind to HTTP requests,
APIs can evolve independently of app logic.

Interoperability challenges in Solid
are solved through Linked Data in RDF.

• If we all store our own data,
  how do we connect it to others’ data?
• How can apps share data,
  without too many prior agreements?
• How do we integrate data
  from multiple data pods?

With JSON-LD, every piece of data
can link to any other piece of data.

{
  "@context":  "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
  "id":        "#ruben-likes-fosdem2019",
  "type":      "Like",
  "actor":     "https://ruben.verborgh.org/profile/#me",
  "object":    "https://fosdem.org/2019/#this",
  "published": "2019-02-03T09:00:00Z"
}

Data shapes and their semantics
enable layered compatibility.

{
  "@context":  "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
  "id":        "#ruben-likes-fosdem2019",
  "type":      "Like",
  "actor":     "https://ruben.verborgh.org/profile/#me",
  "object":    "https://fosdem.org/2019/#this",
  "published": "2019-02-03T09:00:00Z"
}

Different source data
can be concatenated.

{
  "@context":  "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
  "@graph": [{
    "type":      "Like",
    "actor":     "https://ruben.verborgh.org/profile/#me",
    "object":    "https://fosdem.org/2019/#this",
    "published": "2019-02-03T09:00:00Z"
  },{
    "type":      "Like",
    "actor":     "https://example.org/people/silvia#me",
    "object":    "https://fosdem.org/2019/#this",
    "published": "2019-02-03T09:05:00Z"
  }]
}

The developer experience is the most
crucial factor for Solid success.

• front-end developers build
  the apps people see
• together with UX designers,
  they bring Solid to people
• enabling developers
  means enabling ourselves

Simple tasks should be simple,
complex tasks should be manageable.

People think RDF is a pain
because it is complicated.
The truth is even worse.

RDF is painfully simplistic,
but it allows you to work with real-world data
and problems that are horribly complicated.

Dan Brickley & Libby Miller

The old way of working with RDF
followed the old way of JSON APIs.

1. gather input data
2. send a specific API call
3. parse the response as JSON
4. traverse the JSON tree structure
5. update the DOM

The old way of working with RDF
in the browser is hard.

1. gather input data into a query
2. send a specific API call the query
3. parse the response as JSON RDF
4. traverse the JSON tree RDF graph structure
5. update the DOM

Solid needs a diverse community
in order to succeed.

Let’s assemble the brightest minds
from business, technology, government,
civil society, the arts and academia
to tackle the threats to the Web’s future.

Tim Berners-Lee