Subject: [ogpx] Fwd: OGPX Draft Charter

From: Infinity Linden <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 15:04:08 -0700

Working Group Name:

Open Grid Protocol (OGPX)
Chairs:

TBD
Area and Area Directors:

Applications Area

Lisa Dusseault <[email-masked]>

Alexey Melnikov <[email-masked]>
Responsible Area Director:

TBD
Mailing List:[email-masked] ( subscribe at
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ogpx )
Description of Working Group:

Virtual Worlds (VWs) and other Massively Multi-Party Online Applications
(MMOs) are of increasing interest to the Internet community. Innumerable
examples exist of such applications, most using proprietary protocols. With
their roots in games and social interaction, Virtual Worlds are now being
used increasingly in business, education and information exchange. With a
growing user base, creators of such systems are interested in developing a
standard virtual worlds protocol to enable interoperability.

The objective of the OGPX working group is to provide an application-layer
wire protocol for Virtual Worlds to a) enable interoperability between
applications, b) provide for access and exchange with other systems on the
internet such as web services, e-mail and other information storage systems,
c) allow network layers to recognize VW traffic and make routing decisions
based on its characteristics. The Open Grid Protocol (OGP) describes
semantics and protocol interaction for the virtual world, independent of
transport, though bindings for carrying OGP over HTTP are defined.

The core work of the group will be the production of the Open Grid Protocol
suite (OGP), a set of application protocols to communicate and interact with
the state of Virtual World applications. The Open Grid Protocol defines
virtual worlds with the following assumptions:

   - the Virtual World exists independent of the participating clients
   - users have a single, unique presence in the virtual world
   - the virtual world contains persistent objects
   - the virtual world may be partitioned
   - presence, state and simulation occur on authoritative hosts

Foundational components of the Open Grid Protocol include the publication
of: 1) the LLSD dynamic structured data system; an abstract type system for
representing application layer objects along with serialization rules for
protocol messages between these objects. 2) OGP Base, a messaging
abstraction to support the unique needs of VW interactions. 3) Guidelines
for using OAuth and PKIX compliant X.509 infrastructure to authenticate
protocol endpoints. The Open Grid Protocol makes use, wherever possible, of
existing, established standards.

The OGPX working group is not proposing the standardization of any one
complete proprietary protocol, but to build on existing OGP related internet
drafts:

   1. LLSD Dynamic Structure Data
   2. Open Grid Protocol : Base
   3. Open Grid Protocol : Authentication

An additional deliverable describes the use of how OAuth or PKIX compliant
digital certificates may be used with TLS to provide origin integrity in
inter-host protocol interactions. Another deliverable is the specification
for presence establishment in the virtual world based on the previous "OGP :
Teleport" draft of the second life architecture working group.
Goals and Milestones:

   - *October 2009* Publication of the PKIX Profile for Inter-Simulator
   Communication Draft as an Informational RFC
   - *October 2009* Publication of the OGP: Requirements and Introduction as
   an Informational RFC
   - *February 2010* Progression of LLSD to Proposed Standard
   - *February 2010* Progression of OGP Base to Proposed Standard
   - *February 2010* Progression of OGP Virtual World Primitive Object
   Format to Proposed Standard
   - *June 2010* Progression of OGP Authentication to Proposed Standard
   - *June 2010* Progression of OGP Presence Establishment to Proposed
   Standard