Re: Support for Verifiable Claims

Hi Tantek, Chris, Michael, and Mark,

In an attempt to summarize your concerns wrt. Verifiable Claims, each of
you effectively asked the following two questions:

On 10/26/2016 08:12 PM, Chris Wilson wrote:
> I would feel much more positively about this charter if 1) there were
> commitments to implement some product of the WG, and its deliverables
> were more concrete, and 2) it was explained why we NEED a WG here -
> i.e., what wall is the ecosystem hitting by doing work in an
> incubation?

Michael and Chris, these questions were raised earlier this year by both
of you during the Web Payments IG review of the proposed Verifiable
Claims charter. I believe the Web Payments IG answered your questions at
that point by referencing some of the same information that will be
shared below. The question above sounds like the same question from both
of you. The VCTF will attempt to answer it again using information
shared with you previously in addition to more information we've
gathered since that discussion with you.

Tantek and Mark, this may be the first time you're seeing this data, so
let us know if this is an adequate answer or if you remain concerned
about the questions raised regarding incubation and implementations.

The questions each of you raised were a topic of discussion at our
first Verifiable Claims face-to-face meeting[1][2] and our most recent
telecon[3]. This email condenses all of the discussion on this topic in
an attempt to make it easier for each of you to see that we do have
future implementation commitments, we have current implementations, and
why we need a WG for the work to progress.

On 10/26/2016 08:12 PM, Chris Wilson wrote:
> I would feel much more positively about this charter if 1) there were
> commitments to implement some product of the WG, and its deliverables
> were more concrete,

There are 14 commitments from Software Vendors to implement (in code) a
product of the WG:

http://w3c.github.io/webpayments-ig/VCTF/implementers/

There are commitments from Issuers, Repositories, Inspectors, and
Influencers to deploy a product of the WG:

http://w3c.github.io/webpayments-ig/VCTF/implementers/

The deliverables of the WG are concrete, and are listed in the charter:

http://w3c.github.io/webpayments-ig/VCTF/charter/#deliverables

One of the deliverables is a a data model and syntax, which has been
incubated for at least two years (some would argue 4+ years):

http://opencreds.org/specs/source/claims-data-model/

The specification (or some variation of it) has been (or is currently
being) implemented and deployed in real world scenarios by at least 8
organizations, some of whom are W3C members, some of them with millions
of customers (ETS and Pearson, for example):

http://w3c.github.io/vctf/meetings/2016-11-01/#60

I urge you to listen to the audio minutes from our last call (starting
at 27:30 going until 34:00) which has representatives from each
organization listed above asserting that they have implementations:

http://w3c.github.io/vctf/meetings/2016-11-01/audio.ogg

On 10/26/2016 08:12 PM, Chris Wilson wrote:
> 2) it was explained why we NEED a WG here - i.e., what wall is the 
> ecosystem hitting by doing work in an incubation?

We need a WG because we desire broader interoperability.

We have a spec, we have preliminary implementations, and desire the sort
of interoperability and signalling to other organizations that only a
W3C specification can provide. To paraphrase Matt Stone (Pearson) and
Richard Varn (ETS) from our most recent set of meetings: ETS and Pearson
have been trying to inter-operate for more than a decade and see the
Verifiable Claims work as a way to get these two large organizations and
their customers to inter-operate with the assurance that everyone is
implementing to the same standard. A standard that has gone through the
W3C Process is desired. There are many more organizations that desire
this outcome, as we've demonstrated[4] with our broad industry survey data.

My question to each of you, Tantek, Chris, Michael, and Mark is whether
or not this data allays your incubation and deployment experience
concerns to the point of allowing a W3C Verifiable Claims WG to be
formed?

-- manu

[1]http://w3c.github.io/vctf/meetings/2016-10-27/
[2]http://w3c.github.io/vctf/meetings/2016-10-28/
[3]http://w3c.github.io/vctf/meetings/2016-11-01/#60

-- 
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: Rebalancing How the Web is Built
http://manu.sporny.org/2016/rebalancing/

Received on Tuesday, 1 November 2016 18:45:58 UTC