The key to an open social web is permissions. There is data we don’t want to share and data we do want to share, permissions let us create the appropriate barriers. Closed networks like Facebook have reasonably rich permission infrastructures but what about open networks? How should Google and Microsoft enable document sharing across Google Docs and Sharepoint Online? Sure WebDAV can handle the actual mechanics of listing out documents, editing, etc. But how do the permissions get put into place in an open manner directly between users of the two services? This is a hole in the standards infrastructure and it’s time to fill it. Continue reading Open permissions matter for an open web