Re: Request for informal review of Verifiable Claims WG Charter

>This is an *informal* request to review the Verifiable Claims Working
>Group charter. This charter is NOT under W3C Membership review yet.
>

Thanks for the opportunity to discuss this before doing a formal AC review.  After reviewing the draft charter [1] and the minutes of the recent Verifiable Claims Task Force call [2] Microsoft doesn’t believe this effort is mature enough to take to a Working Group.

Specific concerns about the proposed Verifiable Claims WG include:

- The TF minutes indicate “It’s highly unlikely that W3C will staff the work”, and considers “do we depend on companies to do the work, or do we hire people to support us through the process?” The apparent plan is for the proponents to self-fund the team contact with a W3C Fellow. This raises concerns and questions…. Yes, getting specs “over the hump” to Recommendation with issue resolution, test case development, etc. is hard and thankless work, and it’s great when members dig into their pockets to make it happen.  But when launching a new effort, the W3C community should be skeptical of spec efforts that don’t have real skin in the game from the members who would have to implement and use the resulting specs if they are to be successful.  

- The TF minutes also note there is skepticism among those who have reviewed the use cases because there have been several previous attempts to develop similar products / standards that have not been successful.  Manu has written [3] a very useful summary of these “dramatic failures.”  What is lacking in the proposal is persuasive evidence that yet another standards effort would have a better outcome this time.  Who are the key stakeholders who believe they have the problem this work would solve?  Who needs to implement and deploy the solution in order for it to be successful?  Are they ready to make the investments to come to consensus on a standard and make it work in the real world?  

- Inquiries during our informal review indicate that some governments are unlikely to trust credentials that are not received directly from the agency responsible for issuing them. Furthermore, the government interest in this area that we are aware of is directed on de jure standards efforts already underway, and this is where the attention of our technical experts is focused. 

Bottom line: we would oppose creating a Verifiable Claims WG at this time, and are unlikely to participate if it were created because our experts are working in other standards organizations on this general topic.   Proponents would need to do a significant amount of additional work to generate more extensive and persuasive evidence --- that a specific technology in this area is mature enough to be standardized, that a W3C WG in this space would add value to existing standardization efforts, and that a W3C Recommendation would be widely implemented and used – to persuade us otherwise.
 
[1] http://w3c.github.io/webpayments-ig/VCTF/charter/vcwg-draft.html

[2] http://w3c.github.io/vctf/meetings/2016-03-29/

[3] http://manu.sporny.org/2015/credentials-retrospective/



- 
-----Original Message-----
From: Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com>
Date: Tuesday, March 15, 2016 at 1:35 PM
To: "w3c-ac-forum@w3.org" <w3c-ac-forum@w3.org>, "public-webpayments-comments@w3.org" <public-webpayments-comments@w3.org>
Subject: Request for informal review of Verifiable Claims WG Charter
Resent-From: "w3c-ac-forum@w3.org" <w3c-ac-forum@w3.org>
Resent-Date: Tuesday, March 15, 2016 at 1:36 PM

>This is an *informal* request to review the Verifiable Claims Working
>Group charter. This charter is NOT under W3C Membership review yet.
>
>In short, the work is about expressing and exchanging cryptographically
>verifiable proofs of age, driver's licenses, passports, and
>educational/professional qualifications via the Web.
>
>We are sharing this charter now because a few of us that have been
>working on this charter (Manu Sporny, Shane McCarron, and David Ezell)
>will be at the W3C AC Meeting in Cambridge next week and would like to
>discuss it with you.
>
>An Editor's Draft of the Verifiable Claims WG Charter can be found here:
>http://w3c.github.io/webpayments-ig/VCTF/charter/vcwg-draft.html

>
>The Use Cases associated with the charter can be found here:
>http://w3c.github.io/webpayments-ig/VCTF/use-cases/

>
>There is a nascent FAQ that can be found here:
>http://w3c.github.io/webpayments-ig/VCTF/charter/faq.html

>
>Please review the charter if this work seems like it may be interesting
>to your organization and send comments to:
>
>public-webpayments-comments@w3.org
>
>For those of you that will be at the Advisory Committee meeting next
>week, pull me, Shane, or David Ezell aside and we'd be happy to answer
>any questions you may have about the charter.
>
>-- manu
>
>-- 
>Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
>Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
>blog: Web Payments: The Architect, the Sage, and the Moral Voice
>https://manu.sporny.org/2015/payments-collaboration/

>

Received on Thursday, 31 March 2016 16:24:04 UTC