Re: WPWG On NOT abandoning the CG specs (was Re: Update on Web Payments Working Group)

On 5 April 2016 at 23:05, Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com> wrote:

> On 04/04/2016 06:49 AM, Melvin Carvalho wrote:
> > Lastly, please please please, dont abandon the CG specifications.
> > They are some of the best work anywhere.  In a sense the CG is in
> > some ways ahead of the WG at this point.
>
> We have no intention of abandoning the concepts in the CG
> specifications. We will fight for the consensus positions of this group
> - level playing field, financial inclusion, innovative ecosystem, etc.
>
> The recent scuffle in the Web Payments Working Group is not the end. A
> decision was made to use the Microsoft/Google specification as the base
> specification for the Web Payments Browser API. We have the ability to
> change those specifications. One approach is by submitting
> counter-specifications like this:
>
> https://github.com/w3c/webpayments/pull/115
>
> Another approach is for people from this community to pick an issue to
> fight for/against and move that particular item forward:
>
> https://github.com/w3c/browser-payment-api/issues


Great!

The way I see it there are three webs, and three payments webs:

Roughly speaking:

The Web 1.0 era (c. 1990-2000) is about web sites.  A typical payments
solution would be a banking site or paypal.  This is a model that's works
well on the web and can be standardized in a fairly predictable way by
identifying common pain points, use case and creating uniform APIs.
Definitely a pls.

The Web 2.0 era (c. 2000-2010) is more about web pages.  Typically this
allows a page to be a first class citizen of the web and dynamically access
the network and update itself.  This has lead to patterns (primarily AJAX)
that allow remote interaction.  Payments now can be done in the browser
sandbox within a page, but in a very similar fashion to web 1.0, however
without page reloads.  Similarly it makes sense for the WG to standardize
this work and create APIs.

The web 3.0 era (c. 2010-2020+) is about data.  Data, and particularly
linked data, on the web becomes a first class citizen.  This is a
fundamentally different model, but also one that very few people have yet
to understand.  It is in a sense a more distributed and decentralized model
of the web in line with the original vision.  Payments in this paradigm
new, exciting, and very powerful, and can solve use cases existing and not
yet imagined to date.  It can also handle all existing use cases via
bootstrapping.  In this sense it's very similar to technologies like
bitcoin.  It also covers a lot of the work done with JSON LD which deals
with first class data primitives on the web.

While it's valuable to try and modernize the work going on in the WG which
is really revolved around web 1.0/2.0 technologies imho, it seems there is
a political will do dumb things down to much that independent web
developers are struggling to have their use cases addressed.

It's common at the IETF to view a specification and have in your mind what
future versions of that spec will look like.

So Id like to work on essentially W3C Web Payments NEXT, without waiting
for the modernization of the vendor payments system, shopping cart
experience, choosing a credit card, and other nice things the WG is doing,
but have relatively little relevance to the exciting modern internet
payments phenomena.  I think the WG has dropped the ball, for various
reasons on this one, but will possibly still have useful deliverables.
Let's anticipate that, make it the best it can be, and perhaps look toward
the next version of payments which can bootstrap the old and create a whole
new era of use cases on the web ...

I've spent a lot of time doing infrastructure and plumbing work for this.
Im now ready to actually code stuff on top, and integrate it into real
world payments workflows and live crypto currencies.

I'd really like to take the recommendations here, and in the block chain
community group to make very exciting payments workflows, in live systems,
and incorporate existing useful workflows.

>
>
>
> > I think there is a compelling case to be made though interoperable
> > implementations.  Im hoping to spend the next 3 quarters of this
> > year working on some.  This can often be a better way of convincing
> > people than simply a specification ...
>
> Agreed. Implementations matter. Digital Bazaar will be doing an
> implementation of the Web Payments HTTP API and the hope is that
> provides a counter-weight to some of the Browser API design decisions.
>
> -- manu
>
> --
> Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
> Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
> blog: The Web Browser API Incubation Anti-Pattern
> http://manu.sporny.org/2016/browser-api-incubation-antipattern/
>
>