Re: Web Payments CG Charter Proposal

Thanks Manu. Fundamentally I'm still confused as to the difference between
protocol layer stuff and "working systems that enable interoperable payment
technologies," and what standard W3C practices is (if any) when it comes to
development of "working systems."

This is probably because in my mind there is a clear conceptual difference
between the two regardless of the commonality of licensing terms and
legality.

For instance, the HTML spec(s) has a very clear distinction
between implementation (web browsers). To a certain degree this also
facilitates competition in the implementation (including for and non-profit
variants), while facilitating broad consensus in the former category.

In any case, I hate to clutter up the group with discussion of these
things, which is obviously due to my very limited understanding of W3C best
practice with respect to community groups and working groups, both
protocols and the technologies they enable.



Joel Dietz
Founder and CEO
Evergreen | evr.gr | @fractastical <http://www.twitter.com/fractastical> |
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xGdTV_UMOg&hd=1


On Sun, Jan 12, 2014 at 6:50 PM, Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com>wrote:

> Hey Joel, responses to your helpful comments below:
>
> On 01/10/2014 05:29 PM, Joel Dietz wrote:
> > From my perspective one of the most important issues raised by
> > Paypal/Ebay that doesn't seem addressed in this charter is the
> > relationship of the community group to the working group.
> >
> > The ostensible relationship that I see is that the community group
> > issues a series of recommendations to the working group based on the
> >  consensus of the participants of the community group. Because the
> > certain large industry groups will not participate (for IPR or other
> >  reasons), these will be liable to change at the level of the
> > working group.
>
> I have added two things to the charter proposal:
>
> A short sentence about the desire of the group to push technologies
> through the standardization process at W3C via a future Web Payments WG,
> or IETF group related to the work we're doing in this group.
>
> """
> The purpose of the Web Payments Community Group is to discuss, research,
> document, prototype, and create working systems that enable
> interoperable payment technologies for the Web. The goal is to create
> safe, decentralized systems and sets of open, patent and royalty-free
> technologies that allow people on the Web to send each other money as
> easily as they exchange instant messages and e-mail today. These
> technologies may then be voted on by the group to be put through a
> standardization body, such as a future Web Payments Working Group at the
> W3C, to become official technical standards.
> """
>
> A dependency/liaison relationship between the Web Payments CG and a
> potential future Web Payments WG:
>
> """
> Potential Future Web Payments Working Group - The Web Payments Community
> Group will incubate and experiment with technologies before writing a
> technical report that may be voted on by the group to be pushed through
> the standardization process of a yet-to-be-established Web Payments
> Working Group.
> """
>
> > At least in terms of emphasis, this new charter seems to take things
> > in an entirely different direction, the actual development of
> > decentralized technologies.
>
> Hmm, that wasn't the intention. The charter is supposed to formalize
> what we've been more-or-less doing in this group for the past several
> years.
>
> The reason the word 'decentralized' was used is because the Web is
> decentralized. The degree of which it's decentralized is still a debate.
> HTTP, URLs, email, etc. - all decentralized technologies. The only point
> we're trying to make is that the payment mechanism should be
> decentralized as well (to foster competition, resiliency, etc.).
>
> Do you have any suggestions on what we could change with the wording to
> accomplish getting this message across?
>
> > As not much more than a lurker at this point, I don't have a
> > tremendously large stake in either position (although I'd like to
> > keep an openness to both proprietary and open source solutions, as
> > we are a provider of both).
>
> Yeah, the charter isn't meant to give the impression that proprietary
> solutions aren't a part of the entire payments landscape... just that we
> can't standardize on proprietary protocols. I've added this to the
> charter in an attempt to make that more clear in the "Scope" section:
>
> """
> * Bridging open payment methods and protocols with proprietary payment
> methods and protocols.
> """
>
> -- manu
>
> --
> Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
> Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
> blog: The Worlds First Web Payments Workshop
> http://www.w3.org/2013/10/payments/
>
>