I've been wondering over the past week or two how to do identity in connectr; I can see at least four different ways of doing it, and I'm not sure which one's best. Currently, it just grabs the identity from Telepathy (Empathy), and it will still do that; but for some features, at least, a more advanced concept of identity may be handy.
The four possibilities that I can see:
- Nothing — just use what's already there. The main down-side is that no store-and-forward is possible; a mutual friend can't forward status messages or other information. This is the status quo (though a bit more caching is possible).
- Honour system — each person picks a random identifier (uuid) and uses that with all their messages. The advantage is simplicity — it's very easy for everyone to understand how the system works and how it breaks. It's how e-mail works, for the most part.The main down-side is that sooner or later, this will no doubt be used for humorous effect and/or evil.
- RSA key (or similar) — each person makes a RSA key and uses it to digitally sign all their status messages etc. This is probably most similar to how Facebook works (except with the central host replaced by cryptography). The main down-side is limited deniability — once a message is signed, it's signed, everyone can verify it, and nothing can take it back. Also, I have a feeling that I might be trying to solve a social problem through technical means, which is sometimes the wrong thing to do.
- DH key (or similar) — each person makes a DH key and uses it to digitally sign all their status messages etc, signing them separately for each of their friends. There is some deniability— only the recipient is properly convinced by the signature — but store-and-forward is still possible. As with the RSA scheme, I may be trying to solve a social problem through technical means. The DH scheme limits the set of features in a different way to the RSA scheme — a message cannot be forwarded to a third person and retain the original signature; this affects, for instance, retweets and comments on statuses. If Alice comments on Bob's status, Bob's other friends will not see the original signature unless they're also friends with Alice. I'm not sure whether these limits would be for the better or for the worse on balance.
- Something else? There may well be other ways to do this...
Comments? Suggestions? Which of these sounds like the best way to go?
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