Re: Web Identity spec renamed to Identity Credentials

On 2014-03-16 19:59, Manu Sporny wrote:
> The poll to rename the Web Identity spec closed Friday night at midnight
> ET. Here are the poll results after they're combined w/ Kingsley and
> Michael's mailing-list based suggestions:
> 
> Web Credentials           3
> Identity Credentials     15
> Open Credentials          1
> Verified Credentials      1
> Web Identity Credentials  1
> 
> The details are attached as a PDF summary of the poll and a CSV file
> outlining each vote. The website and specification title have been
> updated to match the consensus reached via the poll:
> 
> https://github.com/web-payments/web-payments.org/commit/0c0f8bdc2ab2dedabd60149f7801ea3e2abd1a72

Google's handling of U2F which is about the only innovative web security solution
introduced the last 15 years says it all:  Standardization processes do not generally
work well when combined with innovation.  It simply gets too fuzzy.

Successful standardization rather builds on _established_ technology or concepts.

If you really want to do something in client authentication you need: 1) a new process,
2) an early buy-in from a major platform vendor.  Since none of that is likely
to happen, the second best option is making the payment standard-to-be _agnostic_
to the authentication method.

I expect this message to be ignored, Naysayers are quite unpopular, right?

Anders

PS
That Mozilla's key-generation utility haven't improved since 1995 is IMO another
sign of that this space is close to immune to innovation.  Their soft token scheme
doesn't even feature PIN-codes which is a standard feature in banking.
Note: Mozilla is "in good company", this is just an example.
DS

> 
> -- manu
>

Received on Monday, 17 March 2014 07:29:25 UTC