Re: Support for Verifiable Claims

On 11/3/2016 11:57 AM, Adrian Hope-Bailie wrote:
> Is a standard designed or does it evolve as a result of collaboration 
> between implementers to standardize what they have already incubated?
>
> That seems to be the debate underlying this thread.
>
> Respectfully, I think the larger browser vendors prefer the incubation 
> approach because for the majority of cases at W3C this does work best, 
> for them. The set of implementors is small, their participation at W3C 
> is extensive and when they incubate something they have the size, on 
> their own, to influence the whole market. Further, they generally have 
> the resources to assign at least one person to almost every WG so 
> their influence across the consortium is significant.
>
> So, while every member has only one vote, setting a bar that says 
> forming a WG happens only on the back of an incubated ecosystem is a 
> way to ensure only the large members ever form a WG. For smaller 
> members without the resources to seed an ecosystem their only hope is 
> to propose work that the large members are also interested in pursuing 
> or that is so uninteresting it slips past them unnoticed.
>
> Further, I don't believe the answer to my initial question is finite. 
> Effective standards development happens across a spectrum of different 
> processes appropriate to each case. In the case of most Web standards 
> where the implementers are a well known, small set, of large, 
> multi-national technology companies with the resources to incubate the 
> work first then incubation makes sense.
>
> But, there are exceptions to this where the likelihood of a coherent 
> standard emerging out of independent efforts is low and the 
> implementors are diverse. Sometimes the technology being standardized 
> is sufficiently abstract, or cuts across such a wide range of 
> industries that trying to take all of the incubated, or existing 
> implementations and extract a standard is far less efficient than 
> designing the standard upfront.
>
> I hear concerns that attempting to seed an ecosystem through 
> standardization is wrong and I ask, "Why?" and "Based on what 
> evidence?" Sometimes some basic primitives that everyone has agreed 
> upon up front are the only way the ecosystem will ever be built. 
> Sometimes standardization is the reason the ecosystem exists at all. 
> All I hear to the contrary are anecdotal assertions.
>
> I agree that sometimes these efforts fail, but so do incubation-first 
> initiatives. Rather than preventing these initiatives from starting 
> shouldn't we try to find better ways to evaluate if they are 
> succeeding while the WG is doing it's work? We should be more 
> accepting of a WG forming and then shutting down after a short time 
> with no output if we determine that assumptions made in the charter 
> have not turned out to be true.
>
> We should also accept that when these kinds of up-front 
> standardization efforts are undertaken it is natural for stakeholders 
> to be cautious about throwing resources into the work until a 
> reputable body like W3C has given the group their endorsement.
>
> In fact, the larger W3C members often rely on their own brand and 
> their own endorsement of a project to grow the ecosystem around that 
> project. We have all been part of those technology decisions where a 
> particular code library or technology is chosen because "that's what 
> Google use" or "it was developed and is maintained by Facebook's open 
> source team".
>
> Given the effort the Credentials CG and the Verfiable Claims TF has 
> gone through to demonstrate that they a) have the ability to deliver a 
> well designed standard and b) are solving a real problem I fail to see 
> why endorsing this group by forming a WG is such a problem, especially 
> if the detractors have no intent in participating in the work. (I'll 
> note also that the Credentials CG has incubated this work to death and 
> has been told repeatedly that they can't form a WG on the back of such 
> opinionated technology choices so they have paired down their initial 
> scope to almost a shell of what it was before)
>
> I think what this thread illustrates is that work by a sub-group of 
> members can never get off the ground (even if the impact to the 
> members that don't wish to be involved or agree with the work is 
> basically nil) as long as that sub-group doesn't include one of the 
> W3C super-powers.

I don't think this thread illustrates that at all.  Verifiable Claims 
does not have support of the so-called super-powers, yet the Team has 
already sent Advanced notice that we are creating a charter proposal for 
this WG.

>
> Unless these members are being dishonest about their reasons for 
> blocking the work I can only assume that they are doing so because 
> they fear the overhead of forming the group is a waste of W3C 
> resources. However, by that argument all of the members that are 
> interested in forming the VCWG should formally object to the formation 
> of any other WG until such time as the resources ARE available to form 
> the VCWG.
>
> All members have a single vote and voting for a WG to be formed should 
> not be done in isolation. Forming a WG, like undertaking any project 
> at any company, must be weighed up against other projects and a 
> prioritized list of work must be decided upon. Given that the W3C has 
> a limited pool of resources the vote each member gets is actually a 
> vote for the priority of a proposed piece of work as opposed to a vote 
> in favour of or against the work purely on the merit of it's 
> likelihood of success or failure.
>
> I.e. When a member votes on some work they should consider a) does 
> this group appear likely to acheive it's objectives AND b) how 
> important is this work in relation to other proposed work on the W3C 
> roadmap.
>
> In the case of Verifiable Claims I think it's clear that this is 
> extremely important work that not only makes a lot of sense to be done 
> at W3C given the technologies that are involved but is also a critical 
> piece of a variety of other initiatives related to identity that are 
> being dealt with across education, payments, civil society, health 
> care and more by small companies like Digital Bazaar to national 
> bodies like the Estonian government, right up to the United Nations.
>
> Therefor, if this work continues to be blocked on the back of a small 
> number of objections from a minority of members who feel it does not 
> justify allocation of W3C resources, then I believe it is the right of 
> the other members to ensure it gets the priority they feel it 
> deserves, by blocking any other work that is using up those resources.
>
> This is clearly not a situation we want to get ourselves into in the 
> long run but I fail to see, given the current policies, how the 
> smaller members can ever exercise their rights to do work that they 
> feel is important.
>
> My hope is we will find a way to make forming (and most importantly 
> closing) a WG a more lightweight process so that opposition to forming 
> a WG is far less common and the grounds to shut down a non-delivering 
> WG more clear and easily executable.
>
> If a WG like the VCWG forms on the promise of wide participation by an 
> ecosystem of stakeholders waiting for the W3C's endorsement of the 
> work, then it should be possible to easily measure if that promise is 
> being delivered upon, and if it is not then the W3C should have a 
> mechanism to shut the WG down without wasting further resources or 
> endorsing any output of the group.
>
> On 3 November 2016 at 15:15, 刘大鹏(鹏成) <max.ldp@alibaba-inc.com 
> <mailto:max.ldp@alibaba-inc.com>> wrote:
>
>     Hello all,
>
>     I agree that Verfifiable Claims would provide help for disabled people.
>
>     It could also be useful for production traceability etc.
>
>     I am in favoer of this work moving forward.
>
>     Regards,
>
>     Max
>
>     Alibaba
>
>     On 16/10/2016 17:19, Shane McCarron wrote:
>
>     > Spec-Ops has reviewed the proposed charter for a Verifiable Claims
>     > working group.  We are in favor of this work moving forward, as we
>     > believe a common structure for claims is essential to jump-starting a
>     > universal environment for digital verification.  We look forward to
>     > contributing implementations and tests to this working group as its
>     > recommendations progress.
>
>     TPG echoes these comments from Spec-Ops.
>
>     The task of independently verifying oneself is difficult (or impossible)
>     for many disabled people. Current methods often require people with
>     disabilities to relinquish any degree of privacy and/or to share
>     personal data insecurely. The ability to provide verification digitally
>     has enormous potential to change both these things.
>
>
>     Léonie.
>
>
>
>     -- 
>
>