Re: [w3c/browser-payment-api] Identifiers or Locators (#150)

On 2016-04-25 13:48, ianbjacobs wrote:
> There is a cost to maintaining any registry. The cost grows
> significantly when the registry owners want to keep track of things
> outside of their control. Furthermore, it would be a weakness in the
> design if there were a central point of failure around payment method
> identifiers.

sure there is a cost. IETF has realized that long ago and they now have 
procedures and infrastructure for defining and running them, which 
greatly reduces the cost per registry.

since registries almost exclusively are design-time and not runtime, i 
would not consider them as "central point of failures". they are not 
meant to be used every single time a payment process is initiated. at 
least that was my understanding from the comments so far. instead, they 
are used like most registries: as a centralized place to look up the 
identifiers that so far have undergone some vetting process, and have 
been accepted into the registry.

while of course you have to think about your scenario, i'd like to point 
out that IANA currently manages close to 2000 registries, and they serve 
a diverse set of purposes. there is a lot of experience with that design 
pattern, just not so much within w3c.

> That is why we want to decentralize their creation and enable the broad
> community to self organize.
> I do not believe there should be a single registry.

i think you're misunderstanding registries. the idea of registries often 
is to do just what you're saying: allow a space to evolve naturally and 
idenpedently. the registry simply is a discovery mechanism, often has 
some vetting/review, and also is a good way to minimize identifier 
problems such as naming conventions, clashes, or duplicates.

> Any entity that mints a payment method identifier should take
> responsibility for it, and so W3C will take responsibility for those
> that it mints.

yes. registering an identifier does not mean giving up ownership or 
responsibility. it simply means making it discoverable, and undergoing 
whichever process exist for adding it, such as the requirement to make 
documentation available.

> We are still debating whether to have short names and how those can be
> managed in a decentralized fashion.

good luck with that ;-) that has been tried in various ways many times, 
and it usually fails badly. my advice would be:

- if you want short names, consider a registry.

- if you don't want a registry, use a less problematic namespace. URIs 
might be a good one.

but again, just to repeat it: this shouldn't be about whether you want 
or don't want a registry. this should be about how you want the 
identifier namespace to be designed and to evolve. for some design 
choices you can make, a registry then might be a useful design pattern 
to implement that design.


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