Provenance
Web Civics work — humanitarian ICT made concrete.
This Databox exists because of a long personal and community effort to build software for people and civic life. Timothy Charles Holborn’s technical work runs from 2000; Web Civics was established in 2014 for humanitarian ICT. The Databox layers — Smithy, exchange, evidence, IPMS, personal vault, CKAN — are that project’s work. They continue an open Solid / CSS commons (fork from 7.1.9 on a Node 20-class baseline, now maintained on Node ≥ 24), credited with thanks — dignity for this work does not require diminishing anyone else’s.
The primary story
Why Web Civics exists.
Web Civics was established to close a practical gap: standards bodies and Internet Governance forums alone were not producing enough deployable, people-centred software for civic and humanitarian use. That mission came before — and drives — the choice of Solid and CSS as an open starting point. CSS offered a solid general-purpose pod and protocol server; it did not, by itself, cover the richer needs of individuals and families, and across the Solid ecosystem there were still no implementations for organisations, small business and similar actors. Web Civics Databox is built to serve those missing surfaces.
| When | Work | What it meant |
|---|---|---|
| From 2000 | Personal technical work | Human-centric data systems, ontological mapping and related architectures — the long craft behind later civic software. |
| From 2013 | W3C — definitional participation | Not only later consumption of specs: early involvement in defining the linked identity, credentials and read-write-web lines, among a small number of participants. Traceable in the heritage of the public lists below (read early archives, not only recent traffic). Searchable under timothy.holborn@gmail.com. |
| Later W3C chairs | Human-centric AI / schema / CogAI | Established and chaired public-humancentricai until illness and homelessness made continuing impossible; made co-chair of public-schema-gen; also active on public-cogai. Local archive tooling covers these lists for qualification. |
| Pre-2014 | Aus Civics (Media Prophet) | Stewardship of Aus Civics within Media Prophet activities — intended as an early test-bed customer for the technical work: a real civics context, not a slide-deck demo. |
| 2014–present | Web Civics | Established to produce software for the betterment of humanity. The maintainer now names this frame humanitarian ICT. |
| The gap it addressed | SDOs ↔ Internet Governance | Humanitarian ICT sat between Standards Development Organisations and the Internet Governance ecosystem — underserved when either track is taken alone. |
| How the world now names it | DPI / Digital Public Goods | Related language has since advanced as Digital Public Infrastructure and Digital Public Goods. Web Civics work belongs in that conversation; it does not claim formal affiliation with those programmes. |
| ~2010s databox.me | Early RWW / Solid Databox server | databox.me was one of the early Read-Write Web / Solid Databox servers — part of the live heritage behind the “Databox” name and personal-store model (Wayback snapshot, March 2016). Related research framing: Haddadi et al., Personal Data: Thinking Inside the Box (arXiv:1501.04737v1). |
| This codebase | Web Civics Databox | A concrete instrument of the Web Civics mission: relationship-governed Solid exchange for people, households/families and organisations (including small business) — continuing the Databox idea in the early RWW/Solid sense, implemented and stewarded here on an open Solid server base (CSS 7.1.9 fork, Node ≥ 24). |
Intent
Build and steward software that serves people and communities — not only commercial platform capture, and not only standards text without deployable civic tooling. Credits for Solid and CSS belong on this page; they do not demote the purpose or authorship of the Databox.
W3C public lists — heritage to read
These archives are part of the record of how WebID, credentials and the read-write / Solid line were formed. The project asks readers to consider early heritage, not only the most recent posts.
- public-webid — WebID identity community
- public-webpayments → public-credentials — credentials work that continued from the web-payments list
- public-rww → public-solid — Read-Write Web community that became the Solid list
- public-humancentricai — established and chaired by Timothy Holborn (continued until illness and homelessness prevented further chairing)
- public-schema-gen — co-chaired
- public-cogai — Cognitive AI community list
What Web Civics built here
Databox capabilities created in this project.
These are the substantive layers authored in this repository — the Mapping Smithy, governed exchange, IPMS, personal profile, CKAN bridge and related systems. CSS supplied the Solid HTTP runtime; the Databox model and these tracks are the project’s own work.
| Wave | Prompts | What was built | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| A — discovery & decisions | DBX-01…05 | Extension map, 26 ADRs, threat model, reference architecture, conformance matrix | Complete |
| B — schemas & scaffold | DBX-06…09 | Institution Profile, Databox vocabulary + ODRL profile, synthetic loyalty profile, extension scaffold | Complete |
| C — identity & authZ | DBX-10…14 | Opaque provisioning, tenant isolation, assurance context, VC connection credentials, composed authorizer | Complete |
| D — exchange & evidence | DBX-15…21 | Deposit/submission gateway, proofs, append-only/tombstone, signed receipts, evidence ledger, ODRL + duties, outbox/notifications/recovery | Complete |
| E — integration endpoints | DBX-22…24 | Synthetic institutional bridge, governed review/disposition, reference consumer-pod agent | Complete |
| Live CSS integration | DBX-25… | Smithy in Components.js; opaque WAC-protected boxes; exact-byte commit before receipt; DPoP retrieval on Solid HTTP. Broader two-program lifecycle still open. | Active / partial |
| Hardening & release | DBX-26…28 | Adversarial suites, conformance, release readiness | Follow-on |
| Track | Contribution | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Mapping Smithy | JSON control plane (/.databox/smithy): programs, opaque mappings, source-event deposits (renamed from Mapping Forge) |
Reference impl |
| Smithy Admin | Operator console — programs, mappings, events, rights taxonomy, portability, corrections; Pages demo | Demo + live API |
| IPMS | 60+ industry modules, vertical profiles, org-tailoring backplane | In tree |
| Org mobile apps | WASM/PWA container and vertical app profiles with per-install VC licences | In tree |
| Native / Rust edge | POS Edge, installer, tray supervisor, connector sidecar | In tree |
| Personal Databox Profile | Personal vault, hosting/DNS, household governance, continuity and safe-exit paths | In tree |
| Durable registries & WORM | Durable relationship/tenant/outbox registries and evidence / audit ledger paths | In tree |
| CKAN Bridge | Opt-in governed Pod→open-data publication with reconciliation and correction propagation | Opt-in profile |
| Optional engines | Oxigraph SPARQL; Qualia decision-evidence / migration path (licence-bounded) | Optional / partial |
Inheritance with thanks
Open Solid / CSS starting point — and what Web Civics added.
With gratitude to Inrupt, imec and CSS contributors for Community Solid Server. The fork point was CSS 7.1.9 on a Node 20-class runtime (Node 20 is now end-of-life); this tree maintains and extends that work on Node ≥ 24 and adds the Databox layers below. Honouring that commons and recognising Web Civics authorship are the same job.
| Area | At CSS 7.1.9 fork | In this Databox |
|---|---|---|
| Node runtime | Node 20-class support common at the time | Engines node >= 24 (Node 20 EOL) |
| Solid HTTP / LDP / OIDC / WAC–ACP | Present | Continued; Databox authorizer & stores compose onto it |
| Components.js / storage backends | Present | Continued; Databox live preset and modules added |
| Accounts & general pods | Present — general-purpose individual pods | Continued; plus household / family governance and personal-vault paths the fork baseline did not cover in depth |
| Organisation / SMB Solid products | Not present in CSS; no comparable Solid-ecosystem implementations at the time | Web Civics — relationship Databoxes, Smithy, IPMS, org apps |
| Program × person opaque Databox | — | Web Civics |
| Mapping Smithy / Institution Profile | — | Web Civics |
| Receipts, ODRL duties, evidence ledger | — | Web Civics |
| IPMS, org apps, native edge | — | Web Civics |
| Personal profile, durable WORM paths, CKAN | — | Web Civics |
Shared shoulders
Web, RWW and Solid — foundations we honour.
Earlier open-web work made Solid possible. We acknowledge it; it does not author or own Web Civics Databox. Dates are approximate.
| Era | Thread | Why it matters here |
|---|---|---|
| 1989–1990s | World Wide Web | Read-write hypertext vision; URLs and HTTP as shared substrate. |
| 2000s–2010s | Linked Data / Semantic Web | RDF and shared identifiers for machine-readable web data. |
| ~2010s | RWW, WebID, credentials | Authenticated read-write Linked Data, WebID and related credentials work — including W3C public lists whose heritage includes early definitional participation by a small group of people (see lists above). |
| ~mid-2010s | Databox servers & research | Early deployed Databox / personal-store servers in the RWW–Solid line (e.g. databox.me) and related personal-data platform research such as Personal Data: Thinking Inside the Box (arXiv:1501.04737). Web Civics Databox continues that naming and problem space; it is not a claim of authorship over that paper. |
| ~2015–2016 | Crosscloud | Personal data store / app-access precursor often cited before Solid; details from primary sources. |
| ~2016 onward | Solid Project | Pods, apps, open protocol — the interoperability target this Databox implements against. |
| 2019–2026 | Community Solid Server | Modular TypeScript Solid server (Inrupt, imec and contributors) — version 7.1.9 is this tree’s fork base. |
Further reading
Solid Project · Solid specifications · Community Solid Server · CSS documentation · W3C Solid CG · databox.me (archive) · arXiv:1501.04737
Credits & copyright
Who authored what.
Web Civics Databox
Databox design, implementation, documentation, vocabularies, fixtures, IPMS, Smithy, civics framing and this public site: Timothy Charles Holborn and Web Civics community work. That is the primary authorship of this derivative project.
Community Solid Server (credited)
Original CSS code retains copyright attribution to Inrupt Inc., imec, and CSS contributors. The MIT license preserves that notice. Credit is owed; it does not make this repository an official CSS distribution.