No, I’m not talking about an autopsy of a coiffure. I’m asking “What is permission?”
At its heart, a permission is all about “Can” and “Can’t”. But you need more than that… You need a who and a what around them to start with. “Bob Can Edit” for example.
Next, you need a frame to contain the permission, or else Bob will be editing everything: “Bob Can Edit the Group”
And lastly, you need the permission giver. This is an important one, and needs to be strongly defined. Bob saying Mary can have access to Tom’s bank account should be about as effective as me saying it should rain gold dubloons. The frame of the permission has to be the same as the giver of the permission.
So only “the Group” can say that “Bob Can Edit the Group”.
Or… The Group says: “Bob Can Edit Me”
Now, from Linden comments (and common sense) it would seem like groups will, eventually (perhaps in stages), not be able to own things. [Why? See my earlier entries.] Land for start, at least. So then we have a problem… How can a group say who can and can’t edit land if the group doesn’t own the land. “Bob Can Edit Tom’s Land” just won’t fly. The giver and the frame are different.
The old way would be to just give the land to the group:
But that meant giving up control of it completely. Instead, the owner needs to stay the owner and just share with the group:
Now the owner remains the owner and can control how much permission to give. This could end here if the group was a single person, but a group is many people, spread across many possible rolls (not just the two we have now, Officer and Member). We will need to be more specific than that:
We will still need to be able to share an object with all or several roles within a group, or even across several groups, so this sharing must be through a list. A list of who to share with. No reason we can’t add single agents to this list as well.
Now I could take my land and carve it into empty lots with streets and common areas in between. I set the lots to allow building permission, share the first lot with [ Group “Super Tenants”, Role “Lot 1 Residents” ] and put group members Tom and his partner Mary in the “Lot 1 Residents” Role. They can now build on lot 1, but no other. I do the same for the second lot, but use Role “Lot 2 Residents” and put Bob in that Role. The common areas I share with [Group “Super Tenants”, Role “Common Area Maintenance” ] but don’t put anyone in that Role yet.
![[ 4 Lot Example Diagram ]](http://www.tigercrossing.com/blog/images/perms-lots.jpg "[ 4 Lot Example Diagram ]")
I send a notice to my group’s members (that goes to all of them, online or not) saying that there’s a job opening for a maintenance person. Bob applies and gets the job. I add him to the “Common Area Maintenance” Role as well as his “Lot 2 Residents” Role. He can now build on both his lot and on the common ground, putting up lightposts along the street.
Now lets say Tom and Mary are overdue for their rent. I go into my group and bring up the “Lot 1 Residents” Role permissions. I turn off build. Now, the lot was set to share its build permissions, but the group can always add further restrictions to what was originally permitted. This doesn’t change the lot or its permissions at all, just limits what the members of that Role can do with it. I send the members of that Role a notice saying they are past due and they have a week to pay. Once they do, I’ll release the build lock. If they don’t, I’ll return their items and drop them from the Role. They will still be members of the group, but would then be Role-less.
Do you see the power here?
Now lets make one more twist just to see what happens. Lets say I own land that I’m not using. Bob runs an agency that will develop and operate rental property… The very group I mentioned before: “Super Tenants”. How it works is, I share my parcel’s Build, Landscape, Sub-Divide, and Share permissions (basically, everything but Transfer) with [ Group “Super Tenants”, Role “Land Controller” ] and Bob will do the rest and pay me a weekly fee.
Now Bob is the only member of the “Land Controller” Role of his group. He lays out a little subdivision and does all the things I mentioned above in the first example. I still own the land, and have the final say in its use. I can add restrictions to the sharing at any time, or stop sharing completely. Bob can’t take my land and run since I did not give him Transfer permission, and while he can further share parcels with other Roles, he can’t change the share agreement I made with him to begin with.
So how does this sound to you?