Re: Suggested Revisions to Web Payments Charter

I've made some edits to the "Scope of Work" section:
http://www.w3.org/community/webpayments/wiki/WebPaymentsCommunityGroupCharterProposal#Scope_of_Work

Highlights & discussion:

1. "exchanges of value" changed to "financial exchanges", since value has
so many interpretations.  On this point I have a question, following from
an email on this list by Martin Hepp on 31 Dec: "The textual definitions in
GoodRelations will soon be polished to reflect the fact that the
compensation for a certain offer can include non-monetary assets (e.g.
barter trade)."
http://ebusiness-unibw.org/pipermail/goodrelations/2013-December/000544.html
Question: Would the Web Payments spec potentially handle barter?  Initially
my hunch was that "choice of currency" in a transaction could not include
chickens or hours-of-effort as the units? But wait a moment:

* If A can use WP to send money to B, for B to supply via truck chickens or
remote hours-of-effort to A; and,

* If A can use WP to send USD to B, for B to use WP to send BTC to A;

* Then why can't WP be used to arrange for A to send chickens to B, and for
B to supply hours-of-effort to A?

... I personally don't yet have an opinion about whether arranging barter
ought to be "in-scope" or "out-of-scope" for the Web Payments work. If
barter is in-scope. then my "financial exchanges" edit should revert back
to "exchanges of value".


2. Added to scope: * Methods to accommodate transaction currency choice and
single-currency/multi-currency price management in association with
listings.  << The wording here with "accommodate" leaves flexible whether
the detailed documentation and the implementation specific functions might
be inside or outside the Web Payments spec. All the spec would do is
"accommodate" these.

3. Here a useful distinction between the work "technology" and the word
"solution". The text was: "Technologies that are vital for the proper
operation of the technologies listed above"  It now reads "Technologies
that are vital for the proper operation of the solutions listed above..."
Technologies can implement solutions. Solutions don't implement
technologies. Or so I reckon...?

4. The word "proprietary" is replaced with "restricted". This has come up
in other fora, and the language out there is slowly being morphed toward
greater precision. The point here is that source code under free/libre/open
licenses is still "proprietary" to the holder of copyright title who has
legal authority to issue the licenses. And  ideas under a defensive patent
(eg http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/ ) are still "proprietary" to the
holders of the patent.

5. To the "out-of-scope" topics I've added: "The relative merits of various
currencies or units of account. (i.e. The focus of this Community Group is
on Web-based financial transaction methods with any currencies or units of
account as determined by users.)"

Joseph Potvin


On Mon, Jan 13, 2014 at 5:14 PM, Joseph Potvin <jpotvin@opman.ca> wrote:

> Oops, that previous edit was not on the Web Payments charter... that's the
> landing page for the Web Payments CG. Same point, though: validation or
> push-back on the revisions I've made.
>
> Ditto now for edits made to the "Goals" section of the WP-CG Charter:
>
> http://www.w3.org/community/webpayments/wiki/WebPaymentsCommunityGroupCharterProposal#Goals
>
> Let me comment on a few of my suggested revisions:
>
> 1. The Goal section now has a specific and referenced statement of the W3C
> process goal, with direct links to the appropriate process sections of the
> W3C Process Guide.
>
> 2. Language relating to "patent-free" / "royalty-free": There *can* be
> defensive patents in prototyped (and later reference implementation)
> solutions
> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/06/defensive-patent-license-and-other-ways-beat-patent-system
> The new language is consistent with the W3C policy on patents, found here:
> http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20040205/
>
> 3. On this list there's been some discussion of the word "technologies".
> In these edits I used the word "solutions" instead. The reason is that
> sometimes a use case is addressed by means other then technological (eg
> through information enabling the user to do something, rather than
> automatically doing it for the user).  I don't know if there are definite
> preferences amongst CG members and for principal author Manu about this
> particular word choice.
>
> Regards,
>
> --
> Joseph Potvin
> Operations Manager | Gestionnaire des opérations
> The Opman Company | La compagnie Opman
> http://www.projectmanagementhotel.com/projects/opman-portfolio
> jpotvin@opman.ca
> Mobile: 819-593-5983
> LinkedIn (Google short URL): http://goo.gl/Ssp56
>
>
>
> On Mon, Jan 13, 2014 at 4:01 PM, Joseph Potvin <jpotvin@opman.ca> wrote:
>
>> Please advise if this edit of the Introduction section is helpful:
>> http://www.w3.org/community/webpayments/wiki/Main_Page#Introduction
>>
>> Click the "History" tab to compare before & after.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> --
>> Joseph Potvin
>> Operations Manager | Gestionnaire des opérations
>> The Opman Company | La compagnie Opman
>> http://www.projectmanagementhotel.com/projects/opman-portfolio
>> jpotvin@opman.ca
>> Mobile: 819-593-5983
>> LinkedIn (Google short URL): http://goo.gl/Ssp56
>>
>
>
>
>
> <http://goo.gl/Ssp56>
>



-- 
Joseph Potvin
Operations Manager | Gestionnaire des opérations
The Opman Company | La compagnie Opman
http://www.projectmanagementhotel.com/projects/opman-portfolio
jpotvin@opman.ca
Mobile: 819-593-5983
LinkedIn (Google short URL): http://goo.gl/Ssp56