Update: I’ve been getting to know the Solid project, apps and libraries with help from the team. Now I’m going to put together a proof of concept based on modifying their code to work with SAFEnetwork.

It’s rather cool to say the least to ask for help understanding Solid and their code, then be answered by the man who invented the Web, and to have the chance to answer his questions about SAFE!

The two projects are different in certain respects (mostly because Solid builds on existing Web protocols) but their aims and application are remarkably similar, so I encourage others to take a look at this project. Especially app developers @JPL @nice @Joseph_Meagher and others!

Why? Because se we can learn from what they’re doing and vice versa (they have several working apps which already follow the principles of users owning their own data, cross Web/service identity / verification / signing, client side etc). I think it should be possible to write apps that support both projects too, so maybe you can have your app running with Solid as well as in SAFE. Even if not, I think using and building on their standards for data will be valuable for SAFEnetwork and our users.

To start I’m going to extend one of their libraries to talk to SAFEnetwork and enable Solid apps to use it like Solid server. This will give the Solid community an opportunity to try SAFEnetwork out with their own code, and for this community to try out Solid applications and understand their ideas for a decentralised, user oriented Web, without centralised data silos etc.

They have only a small team but have been working Solidly, ahem for a long time, and there is of course a larger community around them. And many organisations and institutions are already implementing their standards (RDF/Linked Data, Semantic descriptions), including the UK government. There are some very cool demos to play with, but I’ve mostly been buried looking in their code so far.

I think we can learn a lot from them while supporting and enhancing the open standards they are developing, and I hope they can benefit from the work we are doing here too . I’m very excited about this and hope others from this community will join me in learning about Solid and maybe working with their ideas, apps and code.