Re: CfC to publish documents as FPWD of the Web Payments WG

On 04/05/2016 03:29 PM, Adrian Hope-Bailie wrote:
> This is a Call for Consensus (CfC) to publish one or more documents
> as First Public Working Drafts (FPWD) of the Web Payments Working
> Group.

The following is Digital Bazaar's position on the Call for Consensus as
a W3C member company:

> * Proposal 1: Publish "Payment Request API" as a FPWD o
> https://cdn.rawgit.com/w3c/browser-payment-api/0d1d5d7ff0f1bb7b37970994f1eb719101aaccbc/fpwd/paymentrequest.html

+1 to publish as an FPWD.

I note that two of the editors listed on the specification (Richard and
Roy) have not yet done any editing work on the specification. I hesitate
to publish a document with editors that have not contributed in that
capacity yet. Please remove their names for the FPWD and until they
start performing their duties as editors.

> * Proposal 2: Publish "Payment Request API Architecture" as a FPWD o
> https://cdn.rawgit.com/w3c/browser-payment-api/0d1d5d7ff0f1bb7b37970994f1eb719101aaccbc/fpwd/architecture.html

-1 to publish as an FPWD.

The publication of the document could signal to the world that the Web
Payments IG and the Web Payments WG believes that the future of payments
on the Web are purely mediated through the browser. The messaging around
this specification is problematic as there are really only two major
browser vendors these days (Microsoft and Google) and all of these specs
were largely written by them. How would the payments industry react to
this narrative? I doubt it would be viewed in a positive light.

Digital Bazaar asserts that publication of this document should be
delayed until a more holistic Web Payments Architecture document can be
authored that reflects the broader desires of the Web Payments WG
membership. Once that exercise has been completed, we'd be happy to
support publication of that document.

> * Proposal 3: Publish "Payment Method Identifiers" as a FPWD o
> https://cdn.rawgit.com/w3c/browser-payment-api/0d1d5d7ff0f1bb7b37970994f1eb719101aaccbc/fpwd/method-identifiers.html

-0.5 to publish as an FPWD.

The group should put some work into discussing the options that
are in the specification before publishing them as a FPWD. To date, no
substantive discussion around the options in the specification has
happened in the Working Group.

Digital Bazaar asserts that a Working Group should not publish a FPWD
containing three options that have not been discussed by the Working
Group. Once the group has discussed the options and at least attempted
to pick one of the options, we'd support publication.

> * Proposal 4: Publish "Basic Card Payment" as a FPWD o
> https://cdn.rawgit.com/w3c/browser-payment-api/0d1d5d7ff0f1bb7b37970994f1eb719101aaccbc/fpwd/basic-card-payment.html

-1 to publish as an FPWD.

The group should have requested informal/preliminary review by
participants in the card industry before publication of this
specification as an FPWD.

Digital Bazaar asserts that publishing a Card Payment specification
without engaging at least a few major players in the card industry is
ill-advised as it may force some of our colleagues into a defensive
position. If we could get preliminary review (or demonstrate that we
tried to get review) by one or two card industry organizations (Visa,
Mastercard, AmericanExpress, Discover, etc.), we'd support publication.

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We are aware that there is concern that not publishing all four
documents may result in readers not understanding "the big picture". We
reject this assertion for the following two reasons:

1. It is our belief that the big picture presented by these
specifications is very browser-centric. We do not think this is
what's best for the Web nor do we think that this is what the
Working Group wants.
2. All of these documents already exist as publicly accessible
Editor's Drafts so publishing them as an FPWD does not make
information available that was not previously available.

Note, none of our -1s are Formal Objections.

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: The Web Browser API Incubation Anti-Pattern
http://manu.sporny.org/2016/browser-api-incubation-antipattern/

Received on Wednesday, 6 April 2016 15:24:07 UTC