Re: New proposal for the DID WG charter

On Thu, Nov 16, 2023 at 3:46 AM Pierre-Antoine Champin <
pierre-antoine@w3.org> wrote:

> Dear Jeffrey, all,
>
> sorry for the delayed response.
> On 02/11/2023 04:29, Jeffrey Yasskin wrote:
>
> 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.
>
> The goal of the current charter proposal [1] is to avoid this "partial
> standarization" situation by requiring DID methods to exist (with open
> specifications) before DID Resolution can become a recommendation (see the
> Success Criteria section). As Markus pointed out [2], "quite a lot of DID
> methods are already being incubated in reputable organizations". So this
> group is confident that it can meet its success criteria without being
> itself responsible for specifying the DID methods and "pick winners".
>
> Would that address your concern?
>
Yes, actually. Thanks for pointing out
https://github.com/w3c/charter-drafts/commit/d8df0476a32f2ea4331c4f589f4593cf6bcba468,
which I'd missed. Chris and I think "an open specification" isn't quite
enough, but that having some Methods at Candidate Recommendation Snapshot,
or its equivalent at another standards body, is sufficient to satisfy our
concerns about advancing DID Resolution to REC.

How do the other concerned folks feel about that change?

Jeffrey

Received on Tuesday, 21 November 2023 00:25:14 UTC