The W3C Credentials Community Group

Verifiable Claims and Digital Verification

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Credentials CG Telecon

Minutes for 2019-10-29

Manu Sporny: ChristopherA goes over standard intro to CCG call.
Manu Sporny is scribing.
Christopher Allen: Please do consider scribing for future calls, it takes a village.

Topic: Introductions / Re-Introductions

Christopher Allen: Anyone new to the call?
Christopher Allen: Anyone that wants to reintroduce themselves?
Adrian Gropper: Hi, Adrian Gropper, volunteer CTO for Patient Privacy Rights, my role in general is as a privacy expert -- represent the interest of the consumer in this process. What is new is that I'm heavily involved in trying to develop a common language for the various services around SSI.
Adrian Gropper: This work started around RWoT9 - created slide deck that tries to introduce concept of separation of concerns around various protocol work going on in different SSI related groups.
Christopher Allen: W3C-CCG Announcements: https://w3c-ccg.github.io/announcements/

Topic: Announcements

Christopher Allen: DID Resolution TF meeting on Thursdays... happens from 1-2pm PT
Christopher Allen: Closing out action items, planning for next couple of weeks... work item for 2020, please fill out a work item template.
Adrian Gropper: Separation of Concerns slide deck - work in progress: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/11lfS-phwt2-Vd6mN4iVIxj3N4PzV-774I9gLEGuZgzA/edit#slide=id.p
Christopher Allen: We're trying to get scribes to volunteer earlier.
Christopher Allen: Any announcements we should have on this list?
Dave Longley is scribing.
Manu Sporny: There is a DIDWG F2F coming up in January in Europe, probably in London. Nothing settled, but, if you're in the neighborhood and not part of the DIDWG there's always an opportunity to join as an observer by asking the chairs.
Manu Sporny: This is just a heads up for those of you who might be in the area.
Manu Sporny is scribing.
Kaliya Young: Glossary WG being spun up in DIF - one of the Co-Chairs, believe it meets Mondays at 4:30 CT...
Christopher Allen: How do non-DIF people participate?
Kaliya Young: I believe it'll be fine for anyone to join mailing list and join calls. I'll send information to list when it's available.
Kaliya Young: First call isn't until November 7th... we'll post something to the list before then.

Topic: Work Items and Action Items Review

Christopher Allen: The Chairs track work we're doing in this queue...
Christopher Allen: DID Explainer tag - not formally a work item... can we close that?
Dave Longley is scribing.
Christopher Allen: I'm not sure if we should close this out or what at this point.
Manu Sporny: So I don't think it's an official ... it's not in the charter for the DID WG, I don't think. They can publish any document they want to as a NOTE. It falls under introductory text. Before you drop it just check with the chairs on the DIDWG to see if they are willing to take it up.
Manu Sporny: If not, it will be dropped and no one will work on it and it's on there because we thought it was a pretty important document.
Brent Zundel: Dan and I can talk about this.
Brent Zundel: And reach out.
Christopher Allen: Future meeting -- we had some discussion around supporting discussions around JSON-LD contexts and supporting documentation.
Christopher Allen: Future meeting... how to support contributing to JSON-LD Contexts... [scribe assist by Manu Sporny]
Dave Longley is scribing.
Christopher Allen: Are there any other people that want to do a demo of their schemas or contexts before we kick off the work on creating a new task force on this topic or new work item?
Christopher Allen: If you are doing schema work or have some resources you want to share please let the chairs know before we form a work item on this.
Christopher Allen: Next up, the VC Maintenance Charter. This is a little confusing because W3C is in the midst of figuring out how to do ongoing work and there is a proposal for... A. The WG before it completed said the CCG is responsible for any continuing work.
Christopher Allen: It was going to be our job to create the process for that. There is now a proposal for a maintenance charter where the consensus building happens in the CCG but the final results would be reviewed by the chairs of the VCWG.
Christopher Allen: If the charter is approved.
Christopher Allen: They have a process to approve it, the CCG cannot approve changes to standards.
Kim Hamilton Duffy: We just need to close out the vote
Christopher Allen: My question here is ... what are the next steps we have to do here? Do we need to determine a process for that? It hasn't been one of our work items to think about this type of thing. Do we do a regular work item and then when it's the point it's a NOTE ... what level of consensus... do we just pass it on to the new group then?
Kim Hamilton Duffy: This is just closing out ... during last meeting we did a proposal about the heads up on adopting this as a maintenance charter. Right after that we sent out an email describing the seven day heads up for objections and we haven't gotten any. During this meeting we can declare final approval of it.
Christopher Allen: Ok.
Manu Sporny: What Kim said. And there's this comment (I put in IRC).
Manu Sporny: So W3C charter draft is up for review. Noted that we have a seven day wait period for objections ... as long as we wrap this up on the call today it's up to W3M to take the charter forward with the W3C membership, etc. We don't expect any issues with that.
Manu Sporny: On our own timeframe (CCG's timeframe) we need to spend a little time on what that process looks like. Almost all the work has to do with making sure that we continue to refine the VC data model specification and implementation guide, etc. We're just gaining consensus in this group, I can't imagine the work mode will change much.
Manu Sporny: But we may have a work item we want to adopt. Perhaps a group meets on its own maybe once a month to talk and put it to the CCG to review and other groups for broader review as needed. If we get buy in in the CCG then we push to the VCWG. We don't have to do that immediately, sometime in the next month or two is fine.
Dan Burnett: First, a comment on what Manu said. Something we probably need sooner rather than later is at least a place for comments to go. That's really the most important. If people have issues they can know where to file them. Maybe they'll get worked on or not.
Dan Burnett: I wanted to explain to people that the WG now is not really there to do work. It's there as a collection of members of W3C to make a determination on whatever proposal comes from the CCG. Make sure it stays within the charter, has appropriate review, meets IPR requirements and so on.
"Ratification group"
Dan Burnett: There are no regular teleconferences, etc. we don't expect members to remain for a long time. It's about thumbs up/thumbs down and a review process to ask for changes when needed.
Dan Burnett: Yes, a ratification group.
Christopher Allen: Are you and Matt still the chairs, what's the status of that?
Dan Burnett: The proposal has both me (Dan Burnett) and Matt Stone to be the chairs. That can be modified as needed over time if we need another co-chair, etc.
Christopher Allen: I want to propose an item for you two... as far as creating a repo we can do that, just need a name from you. We also need a little bit about the process written down, we need that. Also on the W3C CCG website we need something about this work.
Christopher Allen: To tell people, "If you wish to comment or change things for VC data model spec, etc. you need to go here" The CCG chairs need help there, are you willing to accept that action item?
Manu Sporny: Agree that all of those are good ideas and are things that we need to do.
ACTION: action: Dan, Matt, Manu to name repo
Dan Burnett: Yes, I will kick that off. I will talk to Manu about the repo and how it will work but once we have a proper place I'm happy to do that.
ACTION: We need process summary
ACTION: PR to W3C-CCG Home Page to refer to CCG work on VCs
Christopher Allen: We've done the seven days, do we need to formally do something?
Manu Sporny: I don't think so, we gave people plenty of warning and left it open for seven days and if no objections it would close. I think we're good to go. But proposal+resolution is process over engineering.
Manu Sporny: We can just proceed.
Manu Sporny: This is mostly just a call to action for this group (CCG).
Manu Sporny: This group has a pretty big effect on the maintenance on the VC spec and the implementation guide and we need help from people to move that along. Don't assume the same people that moved it before will continue to do so.
Manu Sporny: Quite often there is a changing of the guard.
Manu Sporny: If you're interested in participating or helping with editorial work or advances/changes to the implementation guide please use this as an opportunity to jump in and help out.
ACTION: VC chairs to sent email about CCG to old VC-WG list, including asking for volunteers.
Christopher Allen: A proposal was made for a new work item for working on a schema -- based on the WorkDay presentation.
Christopher Allen: Gabe and Orie Steele.
Manu Sporny: +1 In support to adopt as a work item.
Christopher Allen: We do have the requisite people from two different groups that want to work on it.
Christopher Allen: Do we have any objections to that as a starting point? They said they are very open to making changes -- they are not "our way or the highway".
Nate Otto: +1 In support to adopt as a work item. I would like to participate in the item, particularly to enable the same capabilities for Open Badges-schema'd credentials.
Christopher Allen: I wanted to get a feeling for other people who are willing to participate or read through it or participate in some calls.
Christopher Allen: The chairs are trying to make sure there's sufficient energy for us to tackle it as a work item.
Ken Ebert: Brent and I have been doing some work on schemas and enhancing them in the Sovrin ecosystem so it's an area of interest for us.
Manu Sporny is scribing.
Christopher Allen: @Ottonomy
Christopher Allen: That would be great... looking for codifying ... not from single community, but from multiple communities.
Nate Otto: I'd like to participate in this work item... particularly w/ Open Badges angle... Open Badges as a schema that can be delivered in a VC envelope.
Christopher Allen: We have enough interest and communities involved, Joe, Kim, thoughts?
Joe Andrieu: +1 Agree
Christopher Allen: +1
Kim Hamilton Duffy: Need to catch up
Christopher Allen: The way the CG process at W3C does not require consent from entire community to start a work item.
Christopher Allen: We think there is sufficient support of this, so it just happens... that's the way the CG process works... we don't need broad approval ... we do need approval of CCG to approve to move the work ahead to a CG Note or official CG document.
Christopher Allen: This work item is approved, will setup the Github.
Christopher Allen: The Chairs are trying to be careful about our work items so we can get work done and finished.

Topic: Year End Purge

Christopher Allen: We'd like to close some things out by the end of the year in some form.
Christopher Allen: I proposed a couple of different things -- categories of discussing this -- items that are close to complete and want to publish final report... can always do something later... just want to get it off of our Agenda.
Christopher Allen: Explainer, Primer, maybe moved to other places... some items have no progress... Editors haven't been active, need new editors.
Christopher Allen: There are items we're keeping... DID Resolution has been doing a great job, meeting every week, reporting out... etc.
Christopher Allen: There are other work items that are making progress -- not sufficient community support... anyone have general comments around us wrapping up these types of things before we tackle new work.
Dave Longley is scribing.
Christopher Allen: The goal is for us to get to a community report of some kind that is specification oriented, community notes, and commentaries are more free form.
Christopher Allen: We have a large number of these and some of these are finished, etc.
Christopher Allen: We have 4 registers, DID method, VC status, LD cryptosuites, LD keys. I've seen activity on DID method, and LD ones.
Christopher Allen: I presume we'll make progress on VC status one. What's the story there, what's required, is it active, do we have a process for it?
Joe Andrieu: I'm directing this to Manu or Dan... do we know anything about where the W3C is going with this? I'd like to move this from rough draft to something else but I think we're caught in a redesign of the process.
Dan Burnett: You're right we're in a redesign and we need to do our own thing.
Manu Sporny: Dan is right, we need to do a stopgap.
Manu Sporny: For these 4 registries, the DID method registry is not in the DIDWG charter and it's being managed just fine in the CCG. We're keeping up. There's a question about where that should go. That may be a question for the DIDWG to discuss. For the time being it's fine in the CCG.
Manu Sporny: The VC status registry is something ... the expectation is that the new VCWG will take it over and it will become a work item but the CCG will still manage it.
Manu Sporny: I think that stays in the CCG. The LD cryptosuite/LD keys stuff is basically waiting on a LD security WG to start up at W3C. Again, the CCG is the only one that is managing those things. All active right now.
Manu Sporny: We've pulled in PRs for all of them in the past couple of weeks and I don't expect that to change for the next 6 months or so.
Manu Sporny: We don't have have to really worry about the W3C process on this stuff until it the 2020 process is ratified. I think even then it won't affect us all that much.
Dmitri Zagidulin: Wanted to check in on the status of the key format registry. If there is not a 100% overlap with the cryptosuite registry.
Justin Richer: +1 To that question
Manu Sporny: Yeah, I thought we merged the two. I thought the LD cryptosuite registry contained things like signatures suites and key formats in it.
ACTION: merge the the two crypto-lg registries, fix links
Dmitri Zagidulin: I thought so too but the link from the work items goes to different places.
Manu Sporny: We should fix that, eliminate the key one and just make it the cryptosuite registry.
Christopher Allen: This is the first I've heard of a LD security WG. I think there's another thing we're kind of involved in ... but I didn't see on the CG mailing list. What's the status of that WG and the larger question of ... how do we get information put on the CCG mailing list about these emergent W3C things. I didn't see anything about it.
Christopher Allen: Act manu
Manu Sporny: I do think we covered it on one of the calls but I'm sure it got buried almost immediately.
Manu Sporny: We had a breakout session at W3C TPAC that was called LD Security. During the breakout session we identified ... the minutes from that call are public you can find them from W3C breakout page, I'll try to find them again.
Manu Sporny: There's a desire from W3C to kick off an LD security WG to work on LD proofs, packaging formats, etc. It's not new crypto just about packaging formats. There's also interesting RDF dataset normalization which other groups want to see as well.
Manu Sporny: We're waiting on two independent mathematical proofs and peer review on both papers on RDF normalization and we're working on merging those papers into a single paper that can be used to standardize at W3C.
Manu Sporny: That's the status ... we're hoping that work is done by the end of this year, it's aggressive but by maybe mid next year we'll have the LD sec WG that is moving all this stuff forward (LD proofs, LD keys, RDF normalization) as an official standard.
Digital Verification CG
Jonathan Holt: If there a link for RDF normalization algorithm?
Christopher Allen: It sounds like we need to do some reports for those work items. And we need to publish them as reports to feed into a WG.
Christopher Allen: Is that correct?
Manu Sporny: Yes.
Christopher Allen: I think we should get these into our work item queue. I don't mind a fast track report with good solid work and a variety of community review.
Christopher Allen: We don't have it on our task list. I won't make it an action but we need a work item proposal and editors and the target.
http://json-ld.github.io/normalization/spec/ <-- current RDF dataset normalization spec (not a link to any proof papers)
Manu Sporny: Linked Data Security meeting minutes from W3C TPAC -- https://www.w3.org/2019/09/18-ldsec-minutes.html
Christopher Allen: The object capabilities for linked data -- there's OCAP-LD and zcaps, etc. I haven't seen any work on it. I've seen that ZCAPs is another potential work item.
Manu Sporny: OCAP-LD and the ZCAP work is the same thing. The only difference is the name. ZCAPs are a subset of OCAPs, there is discussion with Mark Miller on naming.
Manu Sporny: Chris Webber continues to work on it, Digital Bazaar is moving technical implementations forward and it's actively being used.
Manu Sporny: We are actively trying to document so the rest of the community can more easily participate in the work. The spec needs an editor to push it forward.
Manu Sporny: I think it's on Dmitri's queue.
Christopher Allen: I know that DIF has been talking about some OCAP stuff -- anyone from Solid/Sovrin have a particular interest in this work item? Anyone want to be an editor with it?
Christopher Allen: I'm confused on where to go with it. It hasn't seen activity and it seems a little ill-defined but there is one community that is planning on using it.
Christopher Allen: Does anyone know what's going on in the DIF community/SOLID regarding ZCAPs.
Dmitri Zagidulin: I wanted to mention that SOLID is also exploring using LD ZCAPs.
Christopher Allen: To keep this work item going as a CCG item, I'd like to see another editor, someone from another community. Can you try to identify someone from SOLID or somewhere else to move this forward?
Christopher Allen: Single editor things tend not to work.
Manu Sporny: We'll try. The big issue is that it's one of the background technologies. The most obvious ones are the agoric folks. Maybe we can chat with them a bit. There have been a couple of other folks saying they've started using it in systems as well.
Kim Hamilton Duffy: It looks like there's not significant development in DIF on OCAP, Orie said he's contributed to ocap-ld.
^That's the rename
Christopher Allen: The CHAPI spec and polyfill.
Christopher Allen: I don't know if the spec confirms to your work -- we'd really like to see this advance at least to the next level. A release draft or even a report and call it.
Christopher Allen: Right now there's no activity on it. It's status ... Manu?
Manu Sporny: There has been an implementation of the spec for 3+ years, it comes out of the web payments work at W3C. There's a demo site and a whole bunch of code. The polyfill is open source, etc. Multiple organizations have used it.
Manu Sporny: Unfortunately some of the organizations are not being public about it but we can't get folks to talk if they don't want to.
Manu Sporny: There is something that happened at TPAC. The implementations have continued to be worked on, there is work going on there.
Manu Sporny: We have demonstrated interop but not public right now.
Manu Sporny: Most recently we were approached by Mozilla and Google ...and Microsoft and Coil are part of this as well.
Manu Sporny: They are trying to do something similar with the CHAPI and we're talking about moving VCs and ZCAPs across multiple origins on the Web.
Manu Sporny: I just linked to Marco's repo. He heads up work at W3C on this stuff and works on Mozilla team, etc. He would standardize what CHAPI does today and make it native in all browsers and enable Web-based and native wallets to move VCs back and forth.
Manu Sporny: This is a big step forward. We don't feel we can finish up the spec because we just started seeing traction with the browser community.
Manu Sporny: There is a desire to work through the requirements with the browser teams and if we can get there we can just defer to their modal window proposal so long as it does what CHAPI does.
Christopher Allen: It's listed as an unreleased draft. It should be listed as something that was worked on and reached some level of things and we should release it and say we're not going to go to a final report. It doesn't need multiple implementations for that. I want to get it listed and you can put notes that says it's going somewhere else, etc.
Christopher Allen: We don't want it just hanging there that's not what we want as an example. Can we just get it to a release stage for that?
Christopher Allen: I don't like it hanging there and giving people mixed impressions.
Dmitri Zagidulin: I just wanted to add that reason is that there's not a lot of activity on the spec itself is because it's largely been stable. Most of the work has been on the implementation details and the polyfills, etc.
Christopher Allen: To me that's a release draft.
Dave Longley: What do we need to do to declare it a release draft? [scribe assist by Manu Sporny]
Dave Longley: Happy to declare it that, and mark it as such... [scribe assist by Manu Sporny]
Christopher Allen: If you want to add some commentary at the top about existing usage, etc. I would love to see it as a release draft.
So mote it be
Dave Longley: I can put a version on there... if necessary [scribe assist by Manu Sporny]
Kaliya Young: We are at the hour - I have another call goodbye all.
Christopher Allen: The DID Resolution work that been proceeding.. [scribe assist by Manu Sporny]
Manu Sporny is scribing.
Christopher Allen: We're making good progress there.
Christopher Allen: We have 3 projects where the output is not the W3C -- it's the IETF... those drafts are good for six months.
Christopher Allen: Do we need to do more work on them?
Dave Longley is scribing.
Manu Sporny: Which ones specifically? Multihash, etc.?
Kim Hamilton Duffy: Have to drop
Manu Sporny: We can do drafts, I'm not sure if it's worth it for us to do anything, we publish regularly at IETF.
Christopher Allen: I think yeah, it's part of our work. We can do more work than just W3C. But as a release draft that gets listed of things we've done... with a header at the top that says it's intended for IETF. We want to have a version number.
Joe Andrieu: My question is ... have these been handed off to IETF and can we retire them?
Manu Sporny: No.
Joe Andrieu: We're still shepherding them.
Manu Sporny: Yes.
Christopher Allen: They have to be handed off to IETF later.
Joe Andrieu: So we have a task within 6 months to do that.
Manu Sporny: Yes, and we've been updating them.
Manu Sporny: People have been submitting issues and modifying the spec as a result of those and turning the crank at IETF to republish but that doesn't require us at CCG to do anything here.
Justin Richer: In a lot of cases the drafts haven't been submitted to the IETF at all, but published as internet drafts but that doesn't get them into a WG.
Justin Richer: Until they get into a WG or under an area director they aren't part of the process there.
Jonathan Holt: Is someone from Protocol Labs working on submitting these to IETF?
Manu Sporny: Agree with Justin_R
Justin Richer: In particular I care a lot about the http signatures work and it needs to get into an actual WG sooner rather than later because if we start building dependencies on internet drafts all bets are off once it officially starts in terms of compatibility.
Dave Longley: +1
Manu Sporny: Jonathan_holt, yes... that person is me :)
Manu Sporny: Jonathan_holt, and I'd really love some help there.
Christopher Allen: On the page (link in IRC) the CG which has no standards power are the things the CG is working on. If we go to the W3C and we say there is consensus and people talking about it here and in W3C that it's a signal to the IETF community that this stuff should be taken seriously. But we don't have these things listed as drafts at all.
Christopher Allen: I want to get to the point where those things are releases and listed on that page. They don't have to go to final.
Christopher Allen: At least need them in the draft stage. Thanks all, made progress here and want to close things out and move forward in the future, next week will maybe try to close out more and talk about big tent vs. specs for W3C track.