Proposal to leave the name alone for now

Hi folks,

I know are all eager to dive into our work items, and Christopher and I are
looking into ways to remove distractions from our critical work.

It seems clear that a name change will involve a bit of administrivia, so
we started re-visiting the original concerns about why we are discussing
the changing the name.

Originally, there was some pushback from other W3C groups, which can be
roughly summarized as:
1. W3C Members pushed back against the word "Credential".
2. We wanted to broaden the scope to more than just "credentials".

Regarding #1, we now have more security experts in the group, and it's a
good opportunity to use the work "credential" to broaden the definition
from just "passwords", social network logins, etc. This case is
strengthened by community feedback indicating the desire to keep
Credentials CG and Digital Verification CG united.

Regarding #2, "credentials" is a fair description of our general efforts,
i.e. "prove to me that you should be able to do X" is about proving your
credentials.

Given that the original reasons for considering a name change are less
relevant, and given that current naming poll results are saying "change the
name, but only if it's not disruptive", we propose to move forward with the
following

*Proposal:*
- Keep the name "Credentials CG"
- State very clearly in the mission that we're focused on self-sovereignty,
and that compatibility with centralized systems is also within scope.
- Keep the Credentials CG and Digital Verification CG united

*if you have any objections, p**lease indicate so on the Credentials
CG/Digital Verification CG mailing lists, or on the Tuesday community call,
by 8/1/2017.*

If the community agrees with this proposal, we will close out this
discussion (and document why, in case we need to revisit), and give a heads
up to the relevant W3C group.

We look forward to your feedback.

-- Christopher and Kim, co-chairs
-- 
Kim Hamilton Duffy
Principal Engineer | Learning Machine + MIT Media Lab
Co-chair W3C Credentials Community Group
400 Main Street Building E19-732, Cambridge, MA 02139
12001 N. Central Expy, Suite 1025, Dallas, TX 75243

kim@learningmachine.com | kimhd@mit.edu
425-652-0150 | LearningMachine.com