A Short History of the Solid Protocol
+ +Research at MIT et al.
+The Solid project came out of research at MIT into a + powerful web of data
+In 2000, MIT CSAIL + Decentralised Infomation Group (DIG) got funding from + DARPA to work on Semantic Web, which produced RDF-based + systems, and N3 rules. The python codebase for that work is now + at + https://github.com/linkeddata/swap
+From 1999 when the browsers developed the ability to do + “AJAX”, + to call back from the web page client to the server using + what was XMLRPCRequest and became fetch(), then it was possible + to build systems with the App in the client, with calls back to + the server for data storage.
+The project in the lab responded to that possibility with + the “Tabulator” - a JS client which would allow the user to + explore linked data on the web.
+ +2006: Berners-Lee, T., Chen, Y., Chilton, L., Connolly, D., + Dhanaraj, R., Hollenbach, J., Lerer, A. and Sheets, D., 2006, + November. Tabulator: Exploring and analyzing linked data on the + semantic web. In Proceedings of the 3rd international semantic + web user interaction workshop (Vol. 2006, p. 159)
+ +2007: Berners-Lee, T., Hollenbach, J., Lu, K., Presbrey, J. and + Pru d'hommeaux, E., 2007. Tabulator redux: Writing into the + semantic web
+ +2009: Tim BL gave a TED Talk about the importance of the + web of data, not just documents, open data on the web. He also + talks about the web and Linked Data at the Web Summit that + year.
+2009: An important aspect of the project was that it attempts to + make a class="c11">read-write web of data. + Anything the user could read and had permission to write could + also be written. The “Read-Write Web” was a mantra. The August + 2009 Design Issues notes ”Read-Write + Linked Data” and “Socially + Aware Cloud Storage” emphasized the need for a + read-write web of linked data as a response to the data silos + of current social network sites.
+ +2009? an ISWC paper, Hollenbahch, J, et al, MIT, “Using + rdf metadata to enable access control on the social semantic + web”
+ +2011: There was a Read-Write Web Cmmunity + Group, started in 2011, most of its activity in 2012, which + discussed the RWW up till around 2017
+in 2012, at ISWC, for example, Tim gave a + talk about the worlkd od RWLD and the need for + standardising the protocol
+But once users could write as well as read, access control + was important. The W3C’s own site had per-item RDF-based + access control with a UI. The tabulator project more or less + copied that system, but this time storing access control + information in RDF files rather than an access database.
+ +The name Solid
+ +Later work on the Read-writeLinked Data theme was in + collaboration between MIT and QCRI, with funding from QCRI. + That is when Sandro Hawke thought of the name “Solid” for + “Social Linked Data” as a name for the platform - the interface + spec between client and server - the protocol.
+ +2016: Mansour, E., Sambra, A.V., Hawke, S., Zereba, M., Capadisli, + S., Ghanem, A., Aboulnaga, A. and Berners-Lee, T., 2016, April. + A demonstration of the solid platform for social web + applications. In Proceedings of the 25th international + conference companion on world wide web (pp. 223-226) (here)
+2015: As the platform was becoming something which it would be + important to standardize and spread, and as for such a broad + platform, some customers would need to be able to call on + commercial products and services, there was thought of making a + company – a bit as Netscape had for the early Web - provide + commercial solutions.
+In 2015, The team approached Mastercard Labs to see whether + they would consider funding such a company. After much + technical due diligence, the MC Labs team felt that the + platform itself needed more work in the lab. The specs + and the open source code needed to be more elaborate. + They did then fund the next two years of work in the + lab.
+Forming Inrupt.com
+In 2017, we looked again at forming a company. Now the + time was ripe, with support from local VC Glasswing, and + others. The company was Inrupt.
+Inrupt created its own enterprise grade Solid Protocol + compatible products, and also funded work at IMEC at + Ghent University on open source code.
+The Solid organization holding the specs was a Github + organization, and so much of the interaction used github + processes and also Gitter chat. Gitter chat existed + around any github org or repo. (Gitter chat later moved to Matrix protcol, now + in use in 2023). The Solid community had also a + web site + and a forum, + and series of meetups “Solid World” which went + online with Covid.
+ +2018: In October 2018, Melvin Carvalho proposed the + W3C Solid Community group. Code contributors were asked + to join the CG for the limited IP commitment it would give. + A future possible W3C Working group would give much + better Royalty Free guarantees, than the CG.
+Release dates of the protocol:
+2021-12-17 - Version 0.9.0 of the Solid Procol spec + released
+2022-12-31- Version 0.10.0 of the Solid Procol spec + released
+Presentations and press about the Solid movement since 2018 + have included:
+2018, October, + MozFest
+2021 dWeb Camp
+2022 Web Summit.
+ +2023 dWeb Camp, California
+2023 July WeAreDevelopers, Berlin
+ +Early Press included:
+2018/7 Katrina Brooker, Vanity Fair, ““I Was + Devastated”: Tim Berners-Lee, the Man Who Created the World + Wide Web, Has Some Regrets”
+On 27 July 2022, Tim met physically with the W3C TAG to + discuss Solid, during the day and the dinner after.
+ + Tim Berners-Lee, 2023 + +