Re: DID Core Proposed Recommendation draft ready for review

Evernym is also a +1 to this "allow new features" option for all the
reasons Manu states. I personally believe this is going to become the new
normal now that the W3C has formally recognized this option.

=Drummond

On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 10:43 AM Mike Prorock <mprorock@mesur.io> wrote:

> Good summary, thanks.
>
> +1 to "allow new features" from mesur.io as well in case I am not able to
> be on the call
>
> Michael Prorock
> CTO, Founder
> mesur.io
>
> On Sun, Jul 18, 2021, 13:40 Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com> wrote:
>
>> On 7/18/21 8:53 AM, Mike Prorock wrote:
>> > Manu, there is some good flexibility from item 2: "allow features to be
>> > added to it after Recommendation." Are there any concerns from your end
>> > related to this, process wise, or otherwise, that may cause issues down
>> the
>> > road with adoption of that clause?
>>
>> Yes, that's the gambit (unintended consequences), this is new in W3C
>> Process
>> 2020 (and is thus new to everyone).
>>
>> It's not really that risky of a position to take, IMHO. Part of it comes
>> from
>> an attempt to avoid something like this happening again (which was a
>> rolling
>> decade-long disaster that continues to this day):
>>
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5#W3C_and_WHATWG_conflict
>>
>> ... but more importantly, I think we're specifically doing it to help the
>> spec
>> track reality in the market.
>>
>> Case in point is the Verifiable Credentials Data Model specification...
>> while
>> we have a Maintenance group for it, we can only fix bugs, not add new
>> features
>> (we need a recharter for that)... and that's causing the spec to show
>> it's age
>> in places. Nothing really bad, but it would be nice to have the option of
>> adding say "title" and "description" to VCs, for example. :)
>>
>> If we had flipped the "allow new features" bit on the VC spec (we couldn't
>> have done that, btw, Process 2020 wasn't ratified by the time we went to
>> REC)... then we wouldn't be in the position we are in with the VC spec.
>>
>> So, we're learning from our mistakes and trying to take a new option that
>> would allow us to add features that the community deems useful.
>>
>> The downside here is that there may be new REC versions of the
>> specification
>> within a year or so after first REC, so some large enterprises/governments
>> might not like not having the spec stability of 5+ years that they're
>> used to.
>> To be fair, they can always implement against a single REC and choose to
>> not
>> upgrade to the latest (and that's valid). That said, the world has sort of
>> moved on from the age of stable software to an age of Continuous
>> Integration
>> and Continuous Deployment... we expect to get rolling upgrades these days
>> for
>> software. This is the standards version of that.
>>
>> In any case, it's all new to me (and most everyone else in standards)...
>> and
>> the benefits far outweigh the downsides IMHO. I'm a +1 to flip the "allow
>> new
>> features" bit. You can read more about that process here:
>>
>> https://www.w3.org/2020/Process-20200915/#allow-new-features
>>
>> https://www.w3.org/2020/Process-20200915/#revised-rec-features
>>
>> ... and kudos to Brent for catching this; I was clueless that we had to
>> explicitly state this in the spec -- I just thought it automatically
>> became an
>> option if we followed Process 2020.
>>
>> -- manu
>>
>> --
>> Manu Sporny - https://www.linkedin.com/in/manusporny/
>> Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
>> News: Digital Bazaar Announces New Case Studies (2021)
>> https://www.digitalbazaar.com/
>>
>>
>>

Received on Sunday, 18 July 2021 21:14:38 UTC