RE: Different Verifiable Credential protocols? (was: Re: Please vote to approve/disapprove the new charter)

Just for clarification: would work items be in the charter's scope if they relate to digital credentials such as Attribute Based Credentials (ABCs), X.509 attribute certificates, (signed) JWTs - or in general: anything that is created by an issuer that contains claims about a (or more) subject(s), that has proofs of provenance and that it hasn't been tampered with?

B.t.w., as @Daniel mentioned, imho the web mindset is perhaps a bit too restricitive. Since credentials are basically just the envelopes around business-information artefacts (claims), I would like to see the CCG focus on items that make businesses happy, regardless of the envelopes that are being used. But then, the charter has a path where such work items can be proposed and accepted, albeit that that process is a bit more cumbersome.

Rieks

-----Original Message-----
From: Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com> 
Sent: vrijdag 10 april 2020 17:04
To: public-credentials@w3.org
Subject: Different Verifiable Credential protocols? (was: Re: Please vote to approve/disapprove the new charter)

On 4/10/20 10:31 AM, Daniel Hardman wrote:
> Should we understand by this that presenting credentials via QR code, 
> via BlueTooth/NFC, via sneakernet, and so forth is out of scope?

I'll note that Web-browsers can get access to the camera phone and scan QR Codes:

https://github.com/schmich/instascan


and Web Bluetooth is released in many of the latest/popular browsers:

https://caniuse.com/#feat=web-bluetooth


... and WebNFC just went into Origin trials in Chrome:

https://developers.chrome.com/origintrials/#/view_trial/236438980436951041


There continues to be confusion around the colloquial use of the word "Web", which among developers, is mired in the historical protocol that spawned the Web -- HTTP. The colloquial use is often outdated and wrong.

The W3C is about the "Web Platform", which is not limited to HTTP.
Wikipedia has a decent definition here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_platform


... but here are the other protocols that are not HTTP that are viewed as being part of the Web platform:

* TLS
* Geolocation (and by extension, the Global Positioning System,
  protocols and data formats)
* Web Sockets (which are not HTTP!)
* Web Of Things (IoT, CoAP, etc.)
* WebRTC (and a whole bunch of IETF specs on signalling
  and media encoding/transmission protocols)
* Web Bluetooth (Bluetooth and its data formats and protocols)
* NFC (again, data formats and protocols)
* Media Capture API (audio and video formats and protocols)

The W3C is not solely about HTTP, and you learn that pretty quickly when you go to a W3C Technical Plenary, or participate in various standards groups at W3C. I understand that it's difficult for many to participate in that way. Fundamentally, the Web Platform is a bridging technology, connecting all of these disparate data formats and protocols into a cohesive application development environment.

So communication of Verifiable Credentials over NFC, Bluetooth, WebRTC, Web Sockets, QR Codes... IMHO, all very much in scope.

-- manu

--
Manu Sporny - https://www.linkedin.com/in/manusporny/

Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: Veres One Decentralized Identifier Blockchain Launches https://tinyurl.com/veres-one-launches


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Received on Saturday, 11 April 2020 11:43:59 UTC