- From: <msporny@digitalbazaar.com>
- Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2016 15:47:57 -0500
- To: Web Payments IG <public-webpayments-ig@w3.org>, Credentials CG <public-credentials@w3.org>
Thanks to Brian Sletten for scribing this week! The minutes
for this week's Verifiable Claims telecon are now available:
http://w3c.github.io/vctf/meetings/2016-01-26/
Full text of the discussion follows for W3C archival purposes.
Audio from the meeting is available as well (link provided below).
----------------------------------------------------------------
Verifiable Claims Telecon Minutes for 2016-01-26
Agenda:
https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webpayments-ig/2016Jan/0050.html
Topics:
1. Interview Narratives So Far
2. Responding to Identified Narratives
3. Draft Charter Proposal
4. Use Cases Document
Action Items:
1. Manu to create a VCTF Final Report with input from
interviewees and then request feedback from VCTF/Credential CG
members.
Organizer:
Manu Sporny
Scribe:
Brian Sletten
Present:
Brian Sletten, Manu Sporny, Dave Longley, Shane McCarron, Henry
Story, Eric Korb, Greg Kidd, Richard Varn, John Tibbetts, Daniel
C. Burnett, Gregg Kellogg, Jim Goodell, Matt Collier, Stuart
Sutton, David I. Lehn, Rob Trainer, Bill DeLorenzo
Audio:
http://w3c.github.io/vctf/meetings/2016-01-26/audio.ogg
Brian Sletten is scribing.
Manu Sporny: This is an official VCTF call. It is being recorded
and minuted.
Manu Sporny: We'll talk about the individual interviews from the
experts we are speaking to. We are hearing about their
experiences so we can avoid some of the problems they have
encountered. We need to discuss how to respond to their feedback
and we need to discuss the draft charter we have.
Topic: Interview Narratives So Far
Manu Sporny: Brad Hill's input -
http://w3c.github.io/vctf/meetings/2016-01-08/
Manu Sporny: We have had input from Brad Hill.
Manu Sporny: These people are providing input in their personal
capacity. Brad works for Facebook, but he's not speaking for
them.
Manu Sporny: Jeff Hodges' input:
https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webpayments-ig/2016Jan/0048.html
Manu Sporny: Same thing with Jeff Hodges who is with PayPal, but
his input is his own.
Manu Sporny: Jeff has been involved in a variety of identity
standards.
Manu Sporny: Harry Halpin's input:
https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webpayments-ig/2016Jan/0049.html
Manu Sporny: Harry Halpin is providing input based on his
personal experiences, not official W3C input.
Manu Sporny: David Singer's input:
https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webpayments-ig/2016Jan/0051.html
Manu Sporny: The latest one is from David Singer.
Manu Sporny: We have a number of other interviews to have.
Manu Sporny: The input we have gotten back is starting to form a
narrative. David Singer's summary is the best one so far.
Manu Sporny: One of the things that is frustrating is that we
are getting feedback from people involved in the space who are
too busy to look into what we are working on but are providing
high level thoughts.
Manu Sporny: As an example, "We've been down this path before,
why are we doing it again?"
Manu Sporny: We outline clearly what the differences are here:
http://w3c.github.io/vctf/#design-approaches
Manu Sporny: The VCTF page makes it clear what is different
about this approach (e.g. User-Centric vs Service-Centric
approaches). We outline clearly what the differences are.
Topic: Responding to Identified Narratives
Manu Sporny: Some of the people who are providing input didn't
understand this distinction. David Singer also stressed that we
shouldn't just focus on payments (also include education, health
care, etc.)
Manu Sporny: We've been encouraged to study what has been done
before even though we have already done this research. The
feedback is coming from folks who are too busy to realize what we
have already done on this front or why.
Dave Longley: We need to still do the write up of why the
existing technologies don't solve all of the problems.
Shane McCarron: We need more talking points to expose all of the
good data you've collected over the last year.
Manu Sporny: People are saying that the technology already
exists and we should just use it (OAuth, Open ID Connect,
JOSE/JWT). While we have done the analysis and found them
lacking, we haven't written those up.
Manu Sporny: One of the output of the VCTF must be a gap
analysis of why these technologies are insufficient.
Henry Story: There is a huge war in this space. Asking you to
differentiate yourself from existing technologies puts you in
opposition (and makes you enemies) of the existing technology
communities. How can we point out the differences without making
enemies.
Manu Sporny: That is an excellent point. We need to be careful
about that. We know what doesn't work. Coming up with a list of
why they are deficient goes nowhere. You end up arguing on
generalities. We have some very specifics Use Cases and things
we'd like to express and sign. We can talk about those specific
Use Cases and what the end result is if we pull in existing
technology and show how they don't meet the needs.
Manu Sporny: Therefore we narrow it down to the problem we are
trying to solve vs an "Our community vs other community". We end
up talking about actual requirements.
Manu Sporny: If we frame things like that, we should have a
better outcome.
Eric Korb: Still no audio
Greg Kidd: I'm intimidated by the push back from all of the
experts, but we have the governance of this group to help us
manage the problem requirements and work on a reference
implementation.
Manu Sporny: This is one of the strengths of the W3C process.
You have always have experts arguing over the right way to do
things but the process usually produces good results in the end.
Manu Sporny: The question is whether the people in this group
are patient enough to work through the process or act somewhere
else.
Greg Kidd: We have a development team and a set of use cases
that we think could work under this group.
Manu Sporny: The cases where we see the most progress is when we
have a solid use case and can compare different technologies for
that specific problem.
Greg Kidd: I am most interested in the endorsement of a
governance process rather than technical purity.
Manu Sporny: That's the goal of the W3C's process. We need to do
a technical gap analysis to compare the suitability of existing
technologies for our user's needs and not reinvent the wheel.
Manu Sporny: One of the outputs of this group will be a report
of all of these things as an input to the working group.
Henry Story: This new group is mostly about producing Use Cases.
You can't actually say "This is better than this." Are these Use
Cases new so that they can't be solved by existing technologies.
Manu Sporny: Some of the feedback is from people jumping ahead
to the technologies rather focusing on the Use Cases we've
produced. The feedback overall isn't as good as it could have
been if they'd had the time to engage more deeply to produce more
specific feedback on the problem statement.
Manu Sporny: We might need to put a Charter in front of them.
When you are working on a charter document, people in the W3C
process usually get engaged in the content of the text.
Manu Sporny: This group needs to produce documents to stop going
around and around on these points.
Dave Longley: We got better input from Brad through the
interview process rather than the summary emails. We expect the
new interviews to produce better results. The ones who we only
got email feedback from didn't have time and are unlikely to have
time to review any new documents.
Manu Sporny: We've gotten feedback from members of this group
who are experts in their own field in this space who don't
understand why these experts get to come in and control the
narrative.
Manu Sporny: We are trying to find people who disagree with our
analysis.
Manu Sporny: This doesn't mean we aren't going to do the work,
we just need to address that communication gap in some way.
Shane McCarron: +1 To dlongley
Dave Longley: Some of the experts in our group can also provide
feedback through email and interviews. It might be good to have
that input on equal footing as well.
Henry Story: +1 Makes sense
Manu Sporny: Some of the experts don't see other people asking
for these approaches, use cases, etc. Richard Varn and John T.
could jump in and provide that kind of feedback from the
education industry.
Richard Varn: Tell me who to talk to.
John Tibbetts: I've been hesitant to speak up. One of the
problems I've had is that it seems like a political issue, not a
technical issue.
John Tibbetts: There are already sensitivities about specific
terms and technologies. Perhaps I can speak on the problems and
needs.
John Tibbetts: There is an asymmetry in the responses. We are
taking an abstract approach to describing the problems but the
feedback we are getting are jumping straight to specific
technologies.
Dave Longley: I think you should go ahead and talk about the
technologies when you are providing feedback. We as a group need
to avoid a technical bias, but as an expert you can provide a
free response.
Dave Longley: +1 To Dan!
Daniel C. Burnett: I agree with what Longley said. Within the
W3C process, the asymmetry is always going to happen. You will
always get random comments from people who have no idea what
you've done. But you still need to address them. Our goal is to
get started, however. We should respond to the feedback that
might block the specific problem might block getting started.
Manu Sporny: Excellent comment, burn.
Manu Sporny: Harry Halpin said: "Another option is to scope down
and aim at a particular problem domain, for example a uniform
vocabulary for educational credentials. Throwing out privacy and
security concerns for high value use-cases like banking is a
non-starter, as should be obvious."
Manu Sporny: Harry doesn't know that the Lumina foundation
exists that there has been a $5 million initiative to establish
these standards, Open Badges, etc. There are people already
defining vocabularies outside using JSON-LD and it is happening
outside of W3C.
Manu Sporny: That's the kind of thing the education industry
experts need to push back on to address the feedback.
Manu Sporny: W3C management are seeing these assertions but not
seeing the pushback from the education industry.
Henry Story: And this should be done by replying to the mailing
list I suppose?
Manu Sporny: Maybe we should put those comments in a final
report and get specific statements from representatives in the
education industry.
Eric Korb: +1
John Tibbetts: +1
Richard Varn: I will do that when the feedback is done and
address the specifics related to education needs and interests in
this initiative.
Henry Story: Certainly not.
Dave Longley: I'd also like to point out that there a
presumption that people want to throw out privacy and security. I
don't think that is true and it would be good for the experts to
clarify that point.
Henry Story: I mean we certainly don't want to throw privacy and
security out.
ACTION: Manu to create a VCTF Final Report with input from
interviewees and then request feedback from VCTF/Credential CG
members.
John Tibbetts: + 1 .. I'll respond
Richard Varn: Sounds good
Eric Korb: +1 Ack, need also input from Heatlhcare experts
Daniel C. Burnett: I know we're supposed to be working on use
cases, it's not obvious where they are. Can we point us to where
they are.
Topic: Draft Charter Proposal
Manu Sporny: http://w3c.github.io/vctf/charter/proposal.html
Manu Sporny: Yes, that is the last agenda item after the Draft
Charter Proposal.
Manu Sporny: I took a stab at a draft charter proposal. It's
broken into two phases.
Manu Sporny: The goal of Phase I is to produce a data model and
format for credentials and verifiable claims. The timeframe is
very aggressive. But the hope is that the Working Group would
start in five months (we'd vote in May-July timeframe) and the
only thing it would work on is data model, data format and
signature mechanism.
Manu Sporny: After Phase I is done, we will have a way of
expressing verifiable credentials with consensus. Then Phase II
is to produce workflows and protocols to create, store and share
credentials.
Manu Sporny: Does this make sense?
Manu Sporny: Are there any concerns?
Shane McCarron: The timeline feels aggressive given what we know
about the W3C.
Manu Sporny: Well, the proposal is very minimal - just data data
model, format, signature mechanism.
Dave Longley: Perhaps say different types of APIs (browser API,
http API)
Manu Sporny: We could be doing the gap analysis document
starting now so that it is ready when the WG starts. That will
help compress the timeline. Does that address your concerns
ShaneM? [scribe assist by Shane McCarron]
Henry Story: There are lots of different ways of doing things
(e.g. LDP as a protocol for managing these technologies).
Dave Longley: Scope for Phase I should probably include that
Phase II is a goal so it is intentionally considered in the
designs for Phase I even if there's no Phase II output.
Gregg Kellogg: These things always take longer. We might try to
account for that and suggest 24 months and just try to do it more
quickly.
Manu Sporny: That's good feedback. This whole process was way
longer than anyone expected.
Jim Goodell: The data model, data format and signature mechanism
seems doable in the timeframe, esp. given the group is not
starting from scratch.
Manu Sporny: Please look into the charter draft and text. It's
based upon the Web Payments template which was heavily reviewed
by W3C Membership and this is what came out of it. We're trying
to use a template that has made it through the process.
Henry Story: So LDP already offers an answer to read-write over
HTTP, which is why this feels nearly like a couple of different
WGs 1. A group to show how that fits into LDP 2) a group for
developing a new DHT system. Both of them are actually compatible
because RDF is based on URIs so one can link both.
Dave Longley: I think the Phase I goals should consider that
there is a Phase II on the horizon. Our scope might say, our
output is only the format, model, etc. but they are compatible
with the browser APIs we might need to work with in Phase II.
Manu Sporny: If we get Phase I done, people can move forward
with various approaches (to bblfish's comments about LDP) for
defining various protocols.
Topic: Use Cases Document
Manu Sporny: There is a Google Doc that has the latest language
in it.
Shane McCarron:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GySrTXAYpwa4vDPsGE3BMA42FwIAqAyLGigKuKUTGks/edit
Shane McCarron:
https://github.com/opencreds/website/blob/master/specs/source/use-cases/index.html
Manu Sporny: There is also a GitHub link.
Shane McCarron: And we want it to look like this:
https://www.w3.org/TR/web-payments-use-cases/
Manu Sporny: Move the stuff in the Google doc over to the Respec
doc.
Gregg Kellogg: Preview:
http://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/opencreds/website/blob/master/specs/source/use-cases/index.html
Shane McCarron: I am trying to create sections to have the
various contributors can collaborate (ShaneM, gkellogg, bsletten
and burn)
Henry Story: Perhaps I'd just add also that one of the use cases
has to be that this can work across protocols, so that one can
tie into ipfs, etc... This is one way to make it tie into the Web
architecture, and allow it to be very general, which I guess most
other protocols don't satisfy, but tying themselves to specific
syntaxes or protocols.
Shane McCarron: Use the opencreds repository so that we are not
under more onerous IPR restrictions.
Manu Sporny: We'll do it in the OpenCred repo because the CG IPR
policy will clear faster than the IG IPR policy.
Shane McCarron: Let's meet on #vctf-editors on this server
Manu Sporny: I will have a discussion with them about whether
they want to pull it into the IG. We've already had this
discussion with the WebPayments IG and the goal was to do as much
in the CG before pulling it into the IG.
Manu Sporny: Gkellogg asked about the one repo per spec. This is
being done elsewhere and it working. W3C is moving over to GitHub
doing one spec per repo. The issues and the specs are tightly
coupled. You can hand the repo over to a WG.
Manu Sporny: We do a GH repository reassign to preserve history,
autonomy, etc.
Gregg Kellogg: How do you deal with shared definitions,
automated tools to keep self-referencing is consistent.
Manu Sporny: ShaneM has done a fantastic addition to respec to
pull in documents (glossaries in separate repositories). We're
doing that in the WebPayments. You modify the glossary and all
the other specs reflect the changes.
Gregg Kellogg: When we did the CSV stuff we'd make a decision
that affected multiple specs where we could branch and make sure
all affected documents are managed together. I am happy to adapt
to what the group wants to do.
Daniel C. Burnett: I can adapt too. It depends on the groups and
specs. We've found it less common to do the same edits to
multiple specs rather than being concerned about making updates
that affect other specs.
Shane McCarron: I'm not familiar with what you said I've done.
How do we bring in common terms from a different repository?
Manu Sporny: http://w3c.github.io/webpayments-ig/latest/glossary/
Manu Sporny: http://wicg.github.io/web-payments-browser-api/
Manu Sporny: Latest glossary from the Web Payments IG. We pull
that into the Web Payments browser API document.
Manu Sporny: The entire terminology section is pulled into that
document at runtime.
Manu Sporny: You added that functionality, so thanks.
Shane McCarron: The extension I did was not intended for this.
I'm shocked.
Shane McCarron: Neat!
Manu Sporny: Are the editors good with the approach? Shane is
going to create sections and the editors can collaborate without
stepping on each other.
Brian Sletten: I'm good with it.
Received on Tuesday, 26 January 2016 20:48:24 UTC