Re: New proposal for the DID WG charter

On Wed, Nov 1, 2023 at 4:22 PM Ryan Grant <w3c@rgrant.org> wrote:

> Hi Jeffrey,
>
> I hear you repeating things that we've gone over many times.
>
> In short, Ralph was wrong.
>
> What's your response to the problem that picking winners and losers
> directly diminishes the decentralization of the protocol?
>

Standardizing some methods doesn't pick winners. Look at the initial set of
standardized URL schemes: ftp, http, gopher, mailto, news, nntp, telnet,
wais, file, and prospero. There were certainly some in that set that won,
but more of them lost a long time ago.

Failing to standardize (and markets, for that matter) can also cause
centralization: Say Google hands out DIDs with gmail, and then oops their
method turns out to be patented so nobody else can implement it. I worry
that _partial_ standardization is the easiest way to this sort of
centralization: one could sell to organizations saying "look, DID (core) is
standardized", but part of the critical path is something only the seller
controls.

If the Resolution spec prevents that, I'm all ears.

Jeffrey