Re: Proposed clarification to draft Web Payments WG Charter

I support these changes. Thanks Ian.

On 13 August 2015 at 21:46, Ian Jacobs <ij@w3.org> wrote:

> Dear IG,
>
> One W3C Member who reviewed the Web Payments WG charter [1] spotted
> conflicting (or at least confusing) statements in the scope section:
>
> - "By addressing message format and flow, the group leaves open the
> standardization of the delivery mechanism for these messages"
> - "the group will standardize delivery mechanisms for common scenarios"
>
> Below please find a proposal to clarify the text in a manner that is
> consistent with other parts of the charter. I do not plan to modify the
> charter under review in place; we’ll make this sort of change after the
> review period ends.
>
> Please let me know if these changes raise any concerns. There is a summary
> of the changes at the bottom of this email.
>
> Thank you,
>
> Ian
>
> [1] http://www.w3.org/2015/06/payments-wg-charter.html
>
> <OLD>
> 1. Goals
>
> Under this charter, the Working Group defines standards that ease
> integration of the payments ecosystem into the Web for a payment initiated
> within a Web application.
>
> 2. Scope
>
> The Working Group will standardize a set of messages and a message flow
> for the initiation, confirmation, and completion of a payment. Deliverables
> from this group will increase interoperability between payer and payee
> systems (for existing and future digital payment schemes), and encourage
> greater automation of the steps in a typical payment.
>
> By addressing message format and flow, the group leaves open the
> standardization of the delivery mechanism for these messages as this will
> vary depending on the use case and technology stack. To support use cases
> where messages are proxied between payer and payee using different
> technologies, the group will standardize delivery mechanisms for common
> scenarios. This will include JavaScript APIs for the use cases where the
> messages are proxied between payer and payee via a Web browser and
> additional APIs where the messages are exchanged directly over the Web
> between two online entities.
>
> This group is chartered to standardize programming interfaces; not user
> interfaces. This group will not define a new digital payment scheme.
> </OLD>
>
> =========
>
> <NEW>
> 1. Goals
>
> Under this charter, the Working Group defines standards that ease
> integration of the payments ecosystem into the Web for a payment initiated
> within a Web application. Deliverables from this group will increase
> interoperability between payer and payee systems (for existing and future
> digital payment schemes), and encourage greater automation of the steps in
> a typical payment.
>
> 2. Scope
>
> The Working Group will standardize a set of messages and a message flow
> for the initiation, confirmation, and completion of a payment. The Working
> Group will also standardize how digital wallets and Web applications
> exchange these messages through a mediating user agent; see the
> deliverables section for further detail.
>
> This group is chartered to standardize programming interfaces; not user
> interfaces.
>
> This group will not define a new digital payment scheme.
> </NEW>
>
> =========
> SUMMARY OF CHANGES:
>
> 1) Move sentence 2 from “Scope” up to “Goals” since it’s not profoundly
> about scope and reads better under Goals.
> 2) New sentence 2 in first paragraph of scope. Clearer statement of the
> fact that there is “flow” and there is “delivery” and we will deal with
> both of them.
>     However, we are only dealing with delivery in ways where the browser
> mediates. The original purpose of this text was apparently to say something
> like
>     “This flow is likely to be generally useful, whether the messages are
> delivered by a mediating user agent or not. In this charter, however, we
> will only
>       deal with delivery through a mediating user agent.”
> 3) Delete old paragraph 2 of scope, now superseded by the preceding
> sentence.
> 4) Split last paragraph of scope into 2 separate paragraphs (since there
> are two distinct ideas).
>
> --
> Ian Jacobs <ij@w3.org>      http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs
> Tel:                       +1 718 260 9447
>
>
>
>