Re: Secure Data Hubs specification released

On 7/2/19 9:57 AM, Daniel Hardman wrote:
> I don't believe it is useful to any community--Aries, DIF, the CCG, 
> or the greater SSI ecosystem--to have a new spec that eliminates some
> obvious use cases and causes people to start over on 
> implementation--only to end up satisfying less requirements than 
> current implementations target.

You are absolutely right, that is not useful... and is not what is being
proposed.

> This topic is being raised 18-24 months after serious
> standardization work began in other channels, and the scope of the
> spec draft is a step backward. This isn't a recipe for alignment
> around interop.

My understanding was that Aries and DIF were not standards setting
organizations? They are implementation organizations. W3C, IETF, Oasis,
ISO... those are the standards setting organizations.

Yes, there is work going on there, and this is an attempt to figure out
where the common threads are and standardize those things. Keep in mind
that is the exact same approach that was taken for Verifiable
Credentials and Decentralized Identifiers. That is:

1. Work happens in various communities.
2. There is commonality between the work, but not 100% overlap.
3. We get together and figure out where the overlap is, standardize
   that, and then enable the stuff that doesn't overlap to plug into
   the ecosystem in an interoperable way.

> What would be useful would be to adopt the specs that have already 
> been written, instead of proposing new alternatives--unless there is 
> some deficiency in what has already been spec'ed and implemented.

We've noted some deficiency in some areas, yes, and it wouldn't be fair
for us to just point out deficiencies without having a solid solution
that has been deployed with customers to determine if it actually works.
That's what we've been doing during the same time frame (and before).

I suggest you take what you said above in the context of the Solid
team's work or the Tahoe-LAFS' teams work. One could say that they
predate all of this work. The Tahoe-LAFS folks could argue that they
predate all of our work by 12 years.

In other words, it's probably not helpful to assert that the people that
were first to publish and implement should be what's used.

> Let's explore such specifics before we evaluate the merits of a 
> chartered work item that appears to be redundant, in an SDO that 
> isn't necessarily the right home.

Yes, let's explore the specifics! I think that you will find that there
is much more in common than there isn't, and for the stuff that isn't,
we need to figure out a way to get all of this working together in the
ecosystem. All reasonable and well informed opinions matter. The goal is
to create a kernel of something that all of us agree on and then expand
on that.

So, to be clear, I think we want (more or less) the same thing... and we
should figure out whether or not that's true.

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny)
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: Veres One Decentralized Identifier Blockchain Launches
https://tinyurl.com/veres-one-launches

Received on Sunday, 7 July 2019 19:16:54 UTC