Fwd: Re: Request for informal review of Verifiable Claims WG Charter

Forwarding comments that were intended to also go to this mailing list...

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: Re: Request for informal review of Verifiable Claims WG Charter
Resent-Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2016 03:21:13 +0000
Resent-From: w3c-ac-forum@w3.org
Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2016 23:20:47 -0400
From: Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com>
To: w3c-ac-forum@w3.org

Hey Chris,

Apologies for the long delay in getting back to you on this. I wanted to
go back to the Verifiable Claims Task Force, the Web Payments IG, and
the Credentials Community Group with your input to see how they wanted
to respond to both your feedback and Mike Champions feedback.

Responses below...

On 04/01/2016 12:34 PM, Chris Wilson wrote:
>> There is no consensus around which technologies should be used for
>>  each piece in the ecosystem; it is assumed that an officially 
>> chartered Working Group would determine the technologies and best 
>> mode.
> 
> This is the crux of the issue.  I would see those technologies and 
> modes as something that should be explored through incubation, prior
>  to a WG being chartered to declare what the "one true way" is.

We have received conflicting advice on this one. The Credentials CG
definitely has an opinion on this, a set of technical specs that are
being deployed in pilots, and a complete architecture and ecosystem
implementation/demo (albeit, poorly documented at the moment):

http://opencreds.org/specs/source/identity-credentials/

One set of W3C members/staff said that identifying /any/ technology as
the "one true way" would distract people away from agreeing to the
problem statement, goals, and scope of work.

Others, like you, suggest that we should pick a way forward as a
starting point. As I mentioned in the previous email to Mike Champion,
our data is showing that 31 out of 34 respondents so far agree with the
problem statement, goals, and scope of work (with the other 3 being
neutral about it).

So, while a very small minority has asked us to produce a spec to review
before approving the WG, I think we're coming around to the reality that
the larger W3C members would like to see that before signing off on a
WG. So, the group is currently re-organizing our written material to
produce a starter spec for the WG that attempts to not be controversial
and just do the things that we think we have consensus on based on the
survey responses.

> Particularly in the next paragraph:
> 
>> There is rough consensus that a minimum first step is to establish 
>> a way to express verifiable claims by either re-using existing 
>> technology or taking technology that has been incubated and 
>> standardizing it. There is rough consensus that perhaps both 
>> approaches may need to be executed in parallel.
> 
> That's a great definition of one of the next steps; it sounds like 
> incubation of solutions to me, and something that should be done 
> prior to creating a WG.

That solution has been incubated in the Credentials CG and we have specs
and implementations for it. That said, we didn't want to preclude others
from injecting work into the Verifiable Claims WG.

My takeaways from your input, Chris, are:

* Produce a spec proposal for the Verifiable Claims WG
* Make sure that this spec proposal is mentioned in the charter or
  the FAQ

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
JSON-LD Best Practice: Context Caching
https://manu.sporny.org/2016/json-ld-context-caching/

Received on Monday, 9 May 2016 15:47:28 UTC