Re: Update on Web Payments Working Group [The Web Browser API Incubation Anti-Pattern]

On 2016-04-05 21:52, Gregg Kellogg wrote:
"In particular, if the linked data stack is involved, it's clearly a web
standard, but of course, that is not yet clear."

Any payments scenario focused on interoperability of existing systems needs
to take one of two approaches, it seems to me. Either scope is limited to a
(very narrow) intersection of those systems' capabilities. Or
alternatively, scope could include a fuller, formal description of those
capabilities and service endpoints, along with some ability to negotiate a
"handshake" between them (i.e. finding the relative intersection on a
pairwise basis). Given the vast scope and variability inherent in $700
trillion a year of business payments, the latter approach seems more
extensible and scalable.

Linked Data and Semantic Web standards seem like a potential fit for this
type of requirement. That said, there is also work going on from a more
nuts-and-bolts, B2B implementation perspective in OASIS (building on the
ebXML history - the CPPA work in particular, in case anyone is interested).
I wonder (and in fact, have been asking the authors of those specs) if any
thought has been given on that side to converging with this W3C standards
stack. If anyone here has comments or perspectives, I'd love to hear them.

If I hear back any interesting answers to that question, I'll pass them on
here.

Roger



On Tue, Apr 5, 2016 at 1:37 PM, Anders Rundgren <
anders.rundgren.net@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 2016-04-05 21:52, Gregg Kellogg wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Tuesday, April 5, 2016, Anders Rundgren <anders.rundgren.net@gmail.com
>> <mailto:anders.rundgren.net@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>>     On 2016-04-05 19:33, Roger Bass wrote:
>>
>>         This seems to be a time for big picture reflections.
>>
>>
>>     Indeed.  IMO we need to start with questions rather than with answers.
>>
>>     The IMO #1 question is: Should the imagined effort depend on new
>> technology in browsers or not?
>>
>>     Why is that important?  Because if the answer is "Yes" it effectively
>> means that the task is (more or less) owned by the browser vendors [1].
>>     If OTOH the answer is "No", I don't see that the effort has a clear
>> binding to W3C except for marketing reasons.
>>
>>
>> This would seem to indicate that the W3C is only bound to efforts that
>> end up
>>
> > being implemented within browsers, which IMHO is a rather narrow reading
> of W3C's charter.
>
> That's correct.  I don't see that W3C is "authoritative" outside of core
> Web technology
> including browsers and a limited set of data formats (XML, JSON_LD).
>
>
> To me, the question is more about if the work builds on and extends web
> standards,
> which aren't limited to browser implementations. In particular, if the
> linked data
> stack is involved, it's clearly a web standard, but of course, that is not
> yet clear.
>
> Since anybody can develop web standards that aren't tied to browsers, it
> means
> that the main purpose for using W3C in this case is for marketing.
> There's nothing
> wrong with marketing but the W3C membership fees and process requirements
> certainly
> exclude a lot of people who may be needed to succeed.
>
> BTW, standardizing "Applications" (which include Web Payments) have proved
> to be way
> more difficult than standardizing lower layers (core technology).  If you
> then add
> "Security" to the puzzle you quickly reach dead-lock which is why
> community-driven
> projects like the Linux kernel never succeeded creating a unified
> cryptographic
> architecture like featured in Windows and OS/X.
>
> Anders
>
>
>
>> Gregg
>>
>>     Cheers,
>>     Anders
>>
>>     1] Experienced standards editor Ian Hickson explains it pretty well:
>>
>> http://manu.sporny.org/2016/browser-api-incubation-antipattern/#comment-29249
>>
>>     "Fundamentally, the people who write the code have all the power.
>> That’s always been the case"
>>
>>
>>
>>
>