Web Payments Telecon Minutes for 2011-09-02

The minutes for today's call are now available here, thanks to Dave Lehn 
for transcribing the minutes:

http://payswarm.com/minutes/2011-09-02/

Full text of the discussion follows, as well as a link to the complete
audio transcript:

Web Payments Telecon - minutes for 2011-09-02

Agenda
   http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webpayments/2011Aug/0030.html
Chair
   Manu Sporny
Scribe
   Manu Sporny, Dave Lehn
Present
   Manu Sporny, Dmitry Gorilovsky, Jeff Sayre, Pelle Braendgaard,
   Dave Longley, David I. Lehn, Michael Johnson
Audio Log
   http://payswarm.com/minutes/2011-09-02/audio.ogg

Note: Manu Sporny is scribing.
Dmitry Gorilovsky: I'd like discuss additional P2P monetary transaction 
resources.
Dmitry Gorilovsky: We should discuss when to have monthly meetings.
Manu Sporny: Every two weeks was intent.

Topic: Introductions

Jeff Sayre: My name is Jeff Sayre, involved in Open Source tech for a 
number of years, been interested in federated social web
... very interested in privacy, WebID - interested in Web Payments... 
written a number of articles on payments. Newest push is differentiating 
Web 2.0 startups from Web 3.0 "Smartups".
... very interested in pushing an open web payment standards.
Jeff Sayre: http://jeffsayre.com/
Pelle Braendgaard: Hi I'm Pelle Brandengard, one of the main guys behind 
OpenTransact... been working on payments for over 12 years. My startup 
is PicoMoney - service provider for creating virtual currencies.
Pelle Braendgaard: Been working on standards w/ exactly same purpose as 
PaySwarm - we need some standards on this stuff. We need something at a 
lower level than PaySwarm, want a really simple basic standard for every 
single type of payment you can imagine.
Pelle Braendgaard: Very important to not just look at individual use 
cases - think holistically.
Dmitry Gorilovsky: I am Dmitry Gorilovsky from Aintsys corporation based 
in Russia. We are focused on monetary technologies, transactions 
protocols for P2P money.
Dmitry Gorilovsky: Very helpful for companies that want digital P2P 
currencies for everyone.
Dave Longley: no mic
David I. Lehn: I work at Digital Bazaar, been here working on Bitmunk 
(P2P music) - working on various bits and pieces to PaySwarm.
Dave Longley: I'm the CTO of Digital Bazaar, been working on 
decentralized/P2P distribution of digital goods, culminating in PaySwarm 
work.
Dave Longley: been working with manu for about 7 years or so.
Dave Longley: also do some work in semantic web, eg: JSON-LD.
Manu Sporny: Manu Sporny, founder of Digital Bazaar. Company purpose to 
help people buy and sell digital goods over the web. Focused on putting 
financial technology in peoples hands. Worked with P2P payments in the 
past. Involved in semantic web technologies: RDF, JSON-LD, RDFa. Need to 
use those for listing assets. Look at problems holistically. Very 
interested in creating patent and royalty free standards. [scribe assist 
by David I. Lehn]

Topic: Resources

http://www.w3.org/community/webpayments/
Manu explains the voip bridge/IRC bot.
https://github.com/web-payments/
Manu Sporny: GitHub site has minutes and payswarm.com site source. 
Everything open and transparent and recorded. Anyone can listen to audio 
and text logs, see source code for web sites and specs. Commits go live 
immediately. [scribe assist by David I. Lehn]
Manu Sporny: Also a wiki on web payments community site. Should start 
collecting links and other information. [scribe assist by David I. Lehn]
http://payswarm.com/wiki/WordPress_Recipes_Demo
Manu Sporny: WordPress demo of PaySwarm demo and source is available. 
[scribe assist by David I. Lehn]
Manu Sporny: Good to take a look at demo to understand the PaySwarm idea 
in practice. [scribe assist by David I. Lehn]
Manu Sporny: Dmitry, you wanted to talk about P2P payment systems as 
resources? [scribe assist by David I. Lehn]
Dmitry Gorilovsky: Yes, but will shift to next call to to prepare 
interactive demos. [scribe assist by David I. Lehn]
David I. Lehn: what are we using to track issues? github for per-project 
issues or should we use w3 community site issue tracker?
Manu explains other resources.
Pelle Braendgaard: I prefer the github issue tracker - we can start out 
using that one.
David I. Lehn: github has api for issues (i think?) so we might be able 
to migrate issues if needed
Manu Sporny: Advantage of W3C tracker is that issues are automatically 
linked in mailing list archives. [scribe assist by David I. Lehn]
Jeff Sayre: Github is my preference as well.
Dave Longley: +1 github
Michael Johnson: +1 github
Manu Sporny: Ok, looks like we'll use github for issue tracking.

Topic: Web Payment Goals

Let's use the following as discussion points:
Value transfer (core payment)
Discoverability of assets and payment methods
Offer creation and discoverability
Offer acceptance / Digital Contracts / Proof of Purchase
Manu Sporny: Asks Pelle to talk about value transfer due to work on 
OpenTransact and bare minimum to build on. [scribe assist by David I. Lehn]
Pelle Braendgaard: Really, the issue is simply - paying someone 
something. It doesn't have to be a dollar amount, it can also be 
transferring an asset to someone.
Pelle Braendgaard: We wanted to base it on HTTP - look at resources - 
look at URIs as assets - post to that w/ a couple of parameters and 
that's value transfer.
Pelle Braendgaard: This is the core underlying payment in any of these 
use cases.
Pelle Braendgaard: I see a standard like this to be able to replace just 
about any other payment-related system that are used right now in banking.
Manu Sporny: So you would like to see us reduce this down to minimum so 
other more complex systems can be built on top. Approach from simplicity 
instead of a gigantic system. [scribe assist by David I. Lehn]
Pelle Braendgaard: All of these things should be usable on their own - 
for example, certain applications will not have a need for 
discoverability... but all of them will need value transfer.
Dmitry Gorilovsky: We're talking about agreements - whole system needs - 
money emissions - we should be able to manage small payments between peers.
Dmitry Gorilovsky: We need to understand peer-to-peer aspect of it.
Jeff Sayre: I think that makes sense - I'd like to explore PaySwarm spec 
as it currently exists - see which parts are applicable to the overall 
group. There is a lot of it that is pretty simple already - need to look 
more into OpenTransact.
Manu Sporny: We want to pull in other folks from Bitcoin, Ben and 
RipplePay, and meta currency folks. Want to do due diligence on other 
payment systems to make sure we cover as many use cases as we can 
without over complicating the spec.
Jeff Sayre: We may want to look at the current alternatives - we want to 
discuss this - lets see where the commonalities exist between PaySwarm 
and the alternatives. We should have a good understanding after we start 
doing those types of comparison.
Dmitry Gorilovsky: We should talk about common standard for P2P payment 
standards like Bitcoin... do a quick presentation on this stuff. P2P 
payments - will cover that. Prospective directions.
Manu Sporny: We absolutely need to understand these technologies in 
depth before proposing a solution that we say covers something when we 
don't. [scribe assist by David I. Lehn]
Pelle Braendgaard: Peer-to-peer is very, very important.
Manu Sporny: We've been using the word "decentralized" so as not to push 
complexity of P2P systems on to the clients. Ability to have a 
decentralized system is important. [scribe assist by David I. Lehn]
Pelle Braendgaard: P2P is person-to-person, not specifically a 
peer-to-peer transfer - PayPal could be defined as peer-to-peer / 
person-to-person.
Dmitry Gorilovsky: Ah, yes - "pure" P2P is not required, but is nice.
Dave Longley: There will still be authorities that can enforce 
contracts, but they will be decentralized, which means person-to-person 
will interact with some kind of decentralized authority. In 
person-to-person there will be 3 parties, not just 2.
Jeff Sayre: Yes, that clarifies the issue for me - we should model the 
payment standard off of the way the Web is modeled - decentralized. If 
P2P means person-to-person that's good.
Manu Sporny: Security and other issues with Bitcoin. Not necessarily a 
standard Digital Bazaar is working towards. [scribe assist by David I. Lehn]
Dave Longley: (Not to mention all kinds of government and taxation issues)
Jeff Sayre: Yes, I think that makes sense - I agree with that. We 
shouldn't make assumptions and form opinions on things beyond community 
scope. There are economic issues w/ the bitcoin monetary supply. We 
should figure out a way to allow alternative currencies to interface in 
an appropriate way.
Dave Longley: We should avoid that as much as possible.
Dave Longley: The standard shouldn't force particular currencies, it 
should be able to be used with any viable currency.
Jeff Sayre: via modules - you could tie in and offer/extend the payment 
standard to allow alternative currencies. Supporting infrastructure is 
there - but we would not want it in base protocol (bitcoin in core 
protocol). You need to make sure that this is open to other alternatives 
- not integrate directly.
Dave Longley: but implementing a currency should not be part of the 
standard.
Pelle Braendgaard: I agree completely. Bitcoin itself is not HTTP - it's 
not Web at it's core. However, the core value transfer of Bitcoin MtGox 
could implement PaySwarm. We're not talking about underlying economic 
principles here. Since this is a Web Payment - we're talking about the Web.
Dmitry Gorilovsky: Yes, I think that's fine, probably - I'll add some 
comments later on - next call. I don't want to discuss Bitcoin on the 
first call - it's a big topic. Not a topic we want to get into on the 
first call. We shouldn't get into it today.
Jeff Sayre: I think that we should clarify - the payment standard is a 
"Web" payment standard... the "Mobile" based Internet is not two 
separate things. We need to clarify: Are we speaking specifically from a 
technical standpoint - is this Web-only, or is it Internet-only.
Pelle Braendgaard: When I say Web, I mean the underlying technology - 
mobile Web is a part of that.
Jeff Sayre: Yes, that's the same way I think about it.
Pelle Braendgaard: We don't need a new transport protocol.
Manu Sporny: When we talk web we mean HTTP, not CSS, JS, etc. We are 
talking an Internet standard that tends to use web standards. Using RDFa 
to specify listings but could just use JSON-LD. Ben Laurie asked why we 
are we doing this through W3C vs IETF. Doing it in W3C because community 
groups makes the process easy and we are using a number of web 
technologies: IRI, HTML, RDFa, JSON-LD in the future. Don't need a web 
browser for this, can use command line or script. [scribe assist by 
David I. Lehn]
Dave Longley: No new transport protocol, use HTTP/S.
Dave Longley: Ben Laurie works with Google.
Dave Longley: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Laurie
Dave Longley: Is founding director of Apache project
Michael Johnson: Sorry, I don't have voice so I can't hear where the 
discussion is gone. Just wanted to make a point about the decentralized 
structure being similar to how banks operate currently. There is overall 
regulation on the banks, but each can act independently and is able to 
communicate money transfers between each other.Basically an authority in 
the future might just be a bank, with a web status from running the 
authority software.
Dmitry Gorilovsky: We don't need to implement new protocols - we can 
rely on existing technologies.
Manu Sporny: Sounds like we are all in agreement. Agreement on a number 
of core principles. Good sign we're all under same delusion or on the 
right path. [scribe assist by David I. Lehn]
* Offer creation and discoverability
Manu Sporny: PaySwarm calls offers "listings" but is the same concept. 
People should be able to express what they want to sell in a 
decentralized way on the web. Someone else should be able to come to 
that resource and say the want to buy this without going through a 
central intermediary. Dmitry, might be a part of your P2P model. 
PaySwarm came out of a pure P2P network. Two people should be able to 
come to website and exchange something without a centralized listing 
service. That is a failure due to giving power to a single entity on the 
web. Is offer creation and discoverability in scope? [scribe assist by 
David I. Lehn]
Dave Longley: +1
Pelle Braendgaard: +1
Jeff Sayre: +1
Michael Johnson: what is the vote for?
Dave Longley: whether or not offer creation/discoverability is in scope
Michael Johnson: +1
Dave Longley: (listings in payswarm)
Michael Johnson: yes
David I. Lehn: +1
Manu Sporny: do people feel that offer/listing creation/discoverability 
(in a decentralized manner) are in scope for this group? [scribe assist 
by Dave Longley]
Dmitry Gorilovsky: Yes, offer creation/acceptance should be a part of 
this group.
* Offer acceptance
Manu Sporny: if a listing service is centralized, we will have failed, 
we usually want power like this to be decentralized on the web. [scribe 
assist by Dave Longley]
Pelle Braendgaard: How do you take an offer and execute it.
Dave Longley: Offer acceptance sounds like digital contract.
Pelle Braendgaard: Let's say you see a Listing for something and you 
want to purchase it - it should be a fairly simple part of this.
Dave Longley: well, digital contract is also important because there is 
some measure of enforceability/proof of purchase.
Michael Johnson: If that is not part of the process, then there was 
simply a money transfer
Michael Johnson: not necessarily a purchase
Dave Longley: yes, not a transfer of asset.
Michael Johnson: a purchase implies a receipt
Manu Sporny: Yes, we need a digital receipt and contract/proof of 
purchase for transferring an asset, which is different from a simple 
money transfer. [scribe assist by Dave Longley]
Manu Sporny: Proof of purchase/digital contract important part of the 
system? [scribe assist by Dave Longley]
Is proof of purchase or a digital contract a part of this system?
Pelle Braendgaard: I don't think a contract is necessary for the basic 
transfer - but for the higher-level (for offers) it should be a part of it.
Dave Longley: i think it's very important, at a minimum, because of 
legal issues. copyright, etc.
Pelle Braendgaard: I'm not certain if digital signatures are required, 
but they probably are.
Dave Longley: proving that you have access to a particular asset.
Jeff Sayre: I think digital contracts need to be a part of this system - 
it's how you pull it off - that's the question. You want an automated 
offer acceptance process. It needs to be a part of the overall 
transaction... there's always a type of acceptance.
Jeff Sayre: There is some implicit acceptance by wielding a credit 
card... there needs to be something similar to that.
Dave Longley: http://www.w3.org/wiki/WebID
Manu Sporny: WebID is there...
Manu Sporny: Underlying identity mechanism in PaySwarm is based off of 
WebID. You have an IRI to your id, you have public id associated with 
it, a number of accounts associated with it, which may be public or 
private. Not full WebID stack. [scribe assist by David I. Lehn]
Jeff Sayre: BrowserID could be a part of it.
Pelle Braendgaard: On authentication protocols, I think that if it is 
complex in any way - it may not be a necessary core part of it. We could 
say it's recommended.
Michael Johnson: But we are not going to be focused on the identity 
part, correct? That is out of scope of this group. I ask because I 
cannot hear the conversation.
Dave Longley: identity and authentication are important, but we 
shouldn't necessarily say: "you must use this"
Dave Longley: but instead make recommendations
Jeff Sayre: That might be in keeping w/ what we said about 3rd party 
developers - point people to an IRI and let people decide whether it's 
WebID or BrowserID.

Topic: Meetings

Manu Sporny: Can do many things on mailing list, don't want to overload 
people with meetings. [scribe assist by David I. Lehn]
Manu Sporny: How does every other week sound?
Pelle Braendgaard: +1
Dmitry Gorilovsky: +1
Jeff Sayre: +1
Dave Longley: +1
Jeff Sayre: Good convo.
Michael Johnson: +1

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny)
President/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: PaySwarm Developer Tools and Demo Released
http://digitalbazaar.com/2011/05/05/payswarm-sandbox/

Received on Friday, 2 September 2011 22:54:19 UTC