Decentralized Identifiers WG — Minutes

– DRAFT Minutes –

Date: 2024-06-13

See also the IRC Log

Attendees

Present: Manu Sporny, Daniel Burnett, Shigeya Suzuki, Pierre-Antoine Champin, Phil Archer, Gabe Cohen, Benjamin Young, Ivan Herman, Joe Andrieu, Steve McCown, Will Abramson, David Lehn

Regrets: Dave Longley, Ted Thibodeau Jr.

Guests:

Chair: Daniel Burnett, Gabe Cohen

Scribe(s): Pierre-Antoine Champin

Content:

1. Introductions.

Daniel Burnett: Dan Burnett, involved in digital identity and related standards since 25 years, co-created the DID WG.
… here as backup for Gabe.

Gabe Cohen: with Block; editor of a few specs around VC; author of some DID methods.

Gabe Cohen: please everyone q+ on IRC for introducing yourself.
… we will then review the work that we have to do as a group.
… questions about our work items.

Kevin Dean: Kevin Dean, Legendary Requirements; co-editor of the VC use cases document.

Markus Sabadello: Markus Sabadello, author and editor of the initial DID core resolution, and also DID resolution.

Phil Archer: Phil Archer, GS1 Global Office. Think of GS1 as “the bar code people”, standard body for the supply chain industry.
… Interested in how and whether GS1 must implement DID.
… Spent 8 years on the W3C team, working on Linked Data.

Joe Andrieu: Joe Andrieu, Legendary Requirements, co-author of the DID use cases document, creator and co-editor of the DID rubric.
… interested in the DID Resolution spec.

Benjamin Young: Benjamin Yound, Digital Bazaar. Involved in W3C for 10 years: Web Annotations, JSON-LD (chair of the WG), VC.

Ivan Herman: Ivan Herman, W3C, former staff contact of the DID WG. Now staff contact of the VC WG, but still interested in this group.

Wes-Smith: Wes Smith, Digital Bazaar, new to this space.

Manu Sporny: Manu Spory, co-editor of DID and VC specs.

Shigeya Suzuki: Shigeya Suzuki, co-editor of the DID core spec.

Bruno: Bruno Vavala, Interlabs. Here to monitor the work of the group.

Steve McCown: Steve McCown, co-chair of the DID-Comm WG at DIF. On the DIF steering committee.
… Background in cybersecurity, approaching problems from that perspective.

Will Abramson: Will Abramson, Legendary Requirements, co-chair of the CCG.

David Lehn: David Lehn, Digital Bazaar, involved in JSON-LD, VC, DID for quite some time.

James Easter: James Easter, Digital Bazaar, new to this space.

Daniel Pape: Dan Pape, Digital Contract Design. In this space for a few years.

Pierre-Antoine Champin: Pierre-Antoine Champin, W3C, team contact of this group.

Jennie Meier: Jennie Meier, Digital Contract Design, alternate AC-rep for DCD, new to this space.

Tyler Minard: Digital Bazaar.

Daniel Burnett: it’s great to see so many people. Please turn on your video if you are willing to. It is nice to get to know people a little better during the initial call.

2. W3C Process https://www.w3.org/2023/Process-20231103.

Gabe Cohen: the W3C operates under a process of strong consensus. Different from other organizations.
… If somebody disagrees, we may spend time trying to resolve the objection. It does not always work, but we take time for that.
… Also, when we ask for scribes, please volunteer. For newcomers, this is a good way to become popular in the group.
… We will talking more about spec process.
… I look forward to see you all at the F2F meeting. We will do work in the meantime, but this is an important moment for the group.
… A standard group is a place where competitors meet.
… Remember that people who disagree with you are not idiots, they usually are talented and knowldgeable.

Gabe Cohen: https://www.w3.org/2023/Process-20231103.

Gabe Cohen: https://www.w3.org/2023/Process-20231103/#correction-classes.

Gabe Cohen: +1 to what Dan said about scribing; also a good way to pay close attention to the meeting.

Gabe Cohen: https://www.w3.org/2023/Process-20231103/#rec-track.

Gabe Cohen: Above links to the W3C process, and to the section about correction classes and the recommendation tracks.
… We are going to work together as a team; please rely on us chairs and the team contact to resolve conflicts.

Pierre-Antoine Champin: two parts to our work.

3. Charter Review https://www.w3.org/2024/04/did-wg-charter.html.

Gabe Cohen: the group is chartered for two years. We can consider extensions as need be.
… We plan to meet on a weekly basis. This time is the most probably accepted time, according to the previous survey.

Daniel Burnett: we will talk about that at the end of the meeting.

Gabe Cohen: we will maintain the DID core spec; no new features, but class 3 changes may affect compliance.
… we will also maintain the DID registry.
… I talks with people and no one seems interested to take over this deliverable. We might need to deprioritize it.

Daniel Burnett: Just to note that items such as the Plain CBOR representation are maintenance only, so it is not an issue if no one has a desire for changes.

Gabe Cohen: https://w3c-ccg.github.io/did-resolution/.

Gabe Cohen: Then we have the DID Resolution deliverable on REC track.
… It has one input document (link above), but that does not mean that we can not depart from that document.

Manu Sporny: I really do hope we do adopt the CCG DID Resolution spec – it’s the best starting point :).

Gabe Cohen: The charter lists a number of related groups that we may want to liaise with at some point.
… External organizations are also listed.
… To join meetings you need to be a W3C member, but minutes are publicly available.
… The mailing list and github repo are also public.

Phil Archer: don’t overlook the liaison section.
… in the RCH WG, which I chaired with markus_sabadello, we had a hard time justifying that we had actually liaised with the groups listed in our charter.

Daniel Burnett: agree; in some cases, it is worth having a proper liaison.
… In other cases, it is mostly about having people in both group discussing.

Ivan Herman: one more things that people should realize:.
… we have a number of “Horizontal Review” groups (i18n, accessibility, privacy, security, TAG).
… it is extremely important to get their review before publishing a Candidate Recommendation,.
… it is never too early to contact them; they have requests from many different groups.

Phil Archer: +1 to Ivan’s comments.

Ivan Herman: We should draw their attention as soon as we have a First Public Working Draft.

Daniel Burnett: thanks ivan. We will cover this as we go along.
… If you are new to this process, it is easy to think “we are doing our work, the rest does not matter”.
… Many other groups I’ve been involved in start without a process, then add those constraints as they go, realizing they are necessary for a standard group.
… This is what makes a standard good for the world.

5. Charter discussion.

Gabe Cohen: we will create 2 distinct task forces.
… we will need editors for each of our work items.
… You may express interest right now, or later.

Manu Sporny: some comments on the DID-core spec and the DID spec registries.
… I’m volunteering as an editor for both.
… DID-core has editorial PRs since 2021, which we didn’t address as we were working on the charter.
… They should be addressed.
… In the VC WG, we have a new Controller Document spec, which is a generalization of DID-core.

Gabe Cohen: https://w3c.github.io/controller-document/.

Manu Sporny: We has a number of updates, normatively defined.
… This group will have to decide whether to depend on this spec or not.
… The two biggest things that I see for DID-core.
… For the DID-spec registries, a couple of things happened.
… A group of ~14 people are helping dealing with registration, but I’m behind on managing PRs.
… A couple more volunteers would be useful.

Gabe Cohen: as we migrate the rubric and spec registries to W3C Registry, what does it mean process-wise?

Pierre-Antoine Champin: as they are notes, hence non-normative, I guess the transition will be very similar to starting from scratch.

Steve McCown: I’m happy to volunteer to help as a co-editor of either document.

Ivan Herman: we need to check with PLH. This is a special case, hence not covered in the process.

Markus Sabadello: interested in being an editor of the DID resolution work item.

Joe Andrieu: I’m also happy to volunteer to continue editor role with DID Method Rubric and, should we need it, the DID Use Cases document.

Manu Sporny: regarding registries, my understanding is that the WG sets the rules that govern the registry.
… by and large, the current criteria that we have works ok.
… We need to discuss if everyone agrees.

Daniel Burnett: thanks to Steve and Joe for volunteering to help with some documents.
… We will leave this call for volunteers open for a little while, then we will reach out to people.

Joe Andrieu: Co-editors welcome!

Daniel Burnett: We appreciate the volunteering, often we don’t get enough volunteers.

6. Administrivia.

Gabe Cohen: https://www.w3.org/events/tpac/2024/tpac-2024-hybrid-meeting/.

Gabe Cohen: TPAC is coming up in September. It would be excellent if you could join in person, but that’s a hybrid meeting, so online is good too.
… Our meetings are on Monday and Tuesday; no conflict with VC.

Manu Sporny: yes, interested in a joint session w/ FedID WG.

Gabe Cohen: There is a conflict with the Federated ID CG+WG. I contacted their chair about a possible joint meeting.

Phil Archer: +1 to a joint session with the federated ID folks. A compare and contrast discussion would be interesting.

Gabe Cohen: It would be interesting to have presentations/demos of DID uses in the real world.

Phil Archer: if you can get there, it is good. 10 years ago, there was the 20th anniversary of the Web with TimBL and Vint Cerf.
… This year will be the 30th anniversary. You will be glad to be there.

Ted Thibodeau Jr.: there’s also DID & FedID overlap/conflict with WebID, which remains a 2014 Editor’s Draft, trying to become at least a CG Report. needs proper adoption and shepherding, because LOTS of people treat it as if it were a full TR.

Gabe Cohen: recurring meeting: this slot seems to work.
… reach out to me if you have remarks, or know other interested people.

Daniel Burnett: the next meeting will not necessarily be next week. Watch your email.
… If we need to schedule a different slot, this is goint to take time.

Pierre-Antoine Champin: https://www.w3.org/groups/wg/did/calendar/.

Gabe Cohen: please review the charter and list of deliverables;.

Manu Sporny: woo! Thanks everyone! Excited to get started!

Gabe Cohen: open issues or comment on existing ones.