Web Payments Telecon Minutes for 2011-11-18

The minutes for today's call are now available here, thanks to Mike
Johnson for scribing:

http://payswarm.com/minutes/2011-11-18/

Full text of the discussion follows:

Web Payments Community Group Telecon Minutes for 2011-11-18
Agenda:
    http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webpayments/2011Nov/0026.html
Facilitator:
    Manu Sporny
Scribe:
    Mike Johnson
Present:
    Mike Johnson, Manu Sporny, Jose 'Manny' De Loera, Pelle
    Braendgaard, David I. Lehn

Mike Johnson is scribing.

Topic: PaySwarm at W3Conf

Manu Sporny:  W3conf presentation went well, audience mostly shy
    but still had 1 question
Manu Sporny:  people came up after talk to discuss what the
    payment group was doing
Manu Sporny:  talked with representatives of browser vendors, got
    to talk in more depth about payments and browser integration
Manu Sporny:  browser vendors interested, but don't want to be
    identitfied yet. there is interest and they dont feel like our
    group is going the wrong direction
Manu Sporny:  watching people do the online demo was awkward,
    people didnt quite know where to go
Manu Sporny:  going to take some time to make demo website more
    clear about the direction of the payment process
Manu Sporny:  should be easy to find the demo and the spec, too
    many legacy links right now
Manu Sporny:  representatives from web foundation came up to chat
    about how these payments could be used in developing nations
Manu Sporny:  they offered to connect us with representatives
    from some developing states like those in India and Morocco
Manu Sporny:  also mentioned contacts at UN to extend payment
    into developing areas where poverty is high
Manu Sporny:  very hard to get people to join the group, they
    want a commercial launch or something they can use
Manu Sporny:  difficult to get people involved
Manu Sporny: You can see the entire presentation video here:
    http://www.w3.org/conf/#Web_Payments
Jose 'Manny' De Loera:  Manu had a good presentation, got to see
    it streamed
Manu Sporny:  presentations are up and streamable now
Manu Sporny:  html5 demos presentation was very good:
    http://www.w3.org/conf/#Demo_Fest

Topic: Development Update

Manu Sporny:  we've been bad about giving these updates on the
    mailing list, where the tech is at currently - we're making good
    progress
Manu Sporny:  we are going to release a new demo of the payment
    process, protocol has been re-written
Manu Sporny:  we changed from OAuth 1 to a custom protocol, this
    was after much heated discussion
Manu Sporny:  OAuth 1 had ended up making process more
    complicated
Manu Sporny:  OAuth 2 will not solve the tech problems we've run
    into
Manu Sporny:  we'll spec out the protocol as soon as possible
Manu Sporny:  technical issues have been worked out, need
    opinions about implementation feasibility
Manu Sporny:  any questions about demo update?

Topic: JSON-LD Message Format

Manu Sporny:  typically messages have been using RDF graphs,
    using vocabs and prefixes
Manu Sporny: For example:
    http://payswarm.com/vocabs/security#signature
Manu Sporny:  this is an example of a digital signature in
    JSON-LD, note the use of prefixes like "sec:".
Manu Sporny:  some feedback from W3 conference is that developers
    will not like colons in the vocab names
Manu Sporny:  if we don't have prefix names, we will eventually
    have name clashes
Manu Sporny:  the problem comes from extensibility and collision
    prevention
Manu Sporny:  examples of vocab clashes, names and descriptions,
    etc
Manu Sporny:  people don't necessarily like prefixes, but if we
    remove them there will be name clashes
Pelle Braendgaard: I don't like prefixes, personally
Manu Sporny:  do we want to use prefix names or limit the system?
Manu Sporny:  should the network objects use non-prefix names?
Pelle Braendgaard:  I do not like prefixes, complicates code
Pelle Braendgaard:  there might be other ways to do it
Pelle Braendgaard:  should be one way instead of 20 to extend
Pelle Braendgaard:  add attributes in a sub hash or sub array
Pelle Braendgaard:  people from Ruby, Python, Javascript world
    won't like it
Pelle Braendgaard:  there may be other extensibility
    considerations
Manu Sporny:  there may be a hybrid alternative, use keywords and
    if people want to extend it they add prefixes
Manu Sporny:  JSON-LD is flexibile enough to allow people to map
    values to anything they want to - JSON-LD allows you to strip out
    prefix values but keep object in valid form
Mike Johnson:  This isn't exactly talking about vocab prefixes -
    any feedback on structures that we're using from W3Conf? [scribe
    assist by Manu Sporny]
Manu Sporny:  nothing specific
Manu Sporny:  they liked REST API and that we used JSON
Mike Johnson:  Yes, we need to figure out if they're going to
    have an issue with submitting JSON vs. a form POST. [scribe
    assist by Manu Sporny]
Pelle Braendgaard:  I agree about not using JSON for form
    submission, regular form encoding allows people to just submit
    data from Ruby or Python
Pelle Braendgaard:  form submission might be lowest common
    denominator
Manu Sporny:  wordpress plugin to payment server is JSON
Manu Sporny:  someone putting a button on their webpage will only
    have a simple GET URL to attach
Manu Sporny:  FOAF was causing problems with signatures
Pelle Braendgaard:  browser to server wouldn't be covered by
    signatures anyway
Pelle Braendgaard:  browser doesnt have a good way of doing
    signatures on POST data yet.
Manu Sporny:  one of the W3 conf presentations was about browser
    based encryption, so we will want to track that closely.
Manu Sporny:  keep an eye on it, move it into the browser, more
    technical issues but we have addressed a lot of that with the Web
    ID work
Manu Sporny:  complicated digital signatures on receipts needs a
    more robust object than a form post
Manu Sporny:  back to original question of prefixes
Manu Sporny:  people generally would like us to remove prefixes
Mike Johnson:  I think hybrid approach is good - strange
    characters in different elements on the page are an issue.
    [scribe assist by Manu Sporny]
Mike Johnson:  If people use strange characters in names, they
    might hit strange cases... because of using that content in
    IDs... there may be push-back on people using prefixes. Adding
    terms, extending vocabularies will be an issue... people will
    need to add vocabularies and prefixes. [scribe assist by Manu
    Sporny]
Mike Johnson:  I honestly don't know if they like ':' vs. '.' -
    hard to tell... maybe people have issues with ':' and not '.'
    [scribe assist by Manu Sporny]
Manu Sporny:  hard to tell why people don't like it, if some
    people started using the colon, they might not have an issue with
    it.
Pelle Braendgaard:  prefixes are confusing to the eye
Pelle Braendgaard:  the whole prefixing thing tended to turn
    people off XML, for example
Pelle Braendgaard:  the prefixes ended up being mostly useless
    information, lots of management overhead
Pelle Braendgaard:  enterprise developers are used to it, but a
    new generation of developers wont want to deal with it
Pelle Braendgaard:  also why extensibility is important
Pelle Braendgaard:  don't make the basic stuff complex, allow
    people to add the complexity on top of that
Pelle Braendgaard:  I suspect that it is one of the reasons RDF
    never took off, average developer will prefer simple naming
Manu Sporny:  In general, we should try to get rid of prefixes if
    we can
Manu Sporny:  support for JSON-LD has libraries for javascript,
    python, ruby, erlang, php and c++
Manu Sporny:  but we should try to simplify, I agree.
Manu Sporny:  JSON-LD contexts will have foaf and payswarm and
    security and a number of others.
Manu Sporny:  but also generate a series of general terms we can
    use instead of prefix names
Mike Johnson:  Yes, feedback from outside the development group
    working on PaySwarm is good. This stuff can be confusing - all
    the prefixes... [scribe assist by Manu Sporny]
Mike Johnson:  I'm all for simplifying it. [scribe assist by Manu
    Sporny]
David I. Lehn:  Might be complicated...
Manu Sporny:  Ok, so we'll try to work this into the technical
    timeline after we release the demo. [scribe assist by Manu
    Sporny]

Topic: Technical development after launch

Manu Sporny:  something we have been concerned about is getting
    people to use the libraries and develop on the system to give
    feedback
Manu Sporny:  right now we have the wordpress plugin, but we'd
    like other demos, like a gaming demo of someone playing an online
    arcade game
Manu Sporny:  we also have a radio spectrum purchase demo idea
    that should be worked on
Manu Sporny:  what's the best way to set up the developers to get
    them building on top of this system
Manu Sporny:  Jeff would like to integrated with his smart-up
Manu Sporny:  Pelle or Manny interested?
Jose 'Manny' De Loera:  The gaming demo arcade idea is
    interesting, but I'm not a good programmer.
Manu Sporny:  not being a programmer might be a good thing, we
    want people to be able to integrate even if they don't have deep
    experience programming
Jose 'Manny' De Loera:  the arcade idea tends more towards the
    payment process
Pelle Braendgaard:  alreading implementing several things close
    to an authority, can add integration
Manu Sporny:  next week is Thanksgiving, no telecon then
Manu Sporny:  week after, we will have a meeting
Manu Sporny:  more work on the demo and spec, website will be
    updated

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny)
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: Standardizing Payment Links - Why Online Tipping has Failed
http://manu.sporny.org/2011/payment-links/

Received on Friday, 18 November 2011 22:45:06 UTC