Verifiable Credentials Working Group Telco — Minutes

Date: 2024-05-15

See also the Agenda and the IRC Log

Attendees

Present: Hiroyuki Sano, Ivan Herman, Brent Zundel, Manu Sporny, Phillip Long, gregg, Dave Longley, Dmitri Zagidulin, Joe Andrieu, Greg Bernstein, Michael Jones, Gabe Cohen, Ted Thibodeau Jr., Will Abramson, Jennie Meier, Benjamin Young, Paul Dietrich

Regrets:

Guests:

Chair: Brent Zundel

Scribe(s): Michael Jones, Phillip Long, selfissued: because there are times mentioned in the document that doesn’t mean that there is an accessibility consideration

Content:

Phillip Long: PL-ASU has joined #vcwg.

1. VC Overview Note.

Michael Jones: The VC Overview is currently Ivan’s personal document.

Brent Zundel: https://iherman.github.io/vc-overview/.

Greg Bernstein: +1.

Manu Sporny: +1 to it being “pretty fantastic”.

Michael Jones: Brent suggests that we adopt this and turn it into a note.

Manu Sporny: We’ve needed something like this for a while.

Michael Jones: +1 to publish it as a note.

Phillip Long: +1 to this piece of work by Ivan and adopting it as work item and getting into Note form.

Hiroyuki Sano: +1 to great work.

Dave Longley: +1 its great and +1 to publish as a NOTE.

Dave Longley: and +1 to the effort, Ivan!

Ted Thibodeau Jr.: +1 (and it fixes the lifecycle placement issues, too!).

Ted Thibodeau Jr.: might be better titled “Overview & Primer” to encourage more readers.

Joe Andrieu: This is a pretty amazing document.

Brent Zundel: This is a better destination for this content than the Use Cases document.

Ted Thibodeau Jr.: The revised lifecycle content that is now in Use Cases could simply replace this content, fixing those issues, I think.

Ivan Herman: The goal of this document is to give an overview.

Joe Andrieu: TallTed if you mean the one in PR https://github.com/w3c/vc-use-cases/pull/154 that is the same diagram.

Proposed resolution: Adopt https://iherman.github.io/vc-overview/ as a Note-track work item. (Brent Zundel)

Manu Sporny: +1.

Dave Longley: +1.

Dmitri Zagidulin: +1.

Hiroyuki Sano: +1.

Greg Bernstein: +1.

Ivan Herman: +1.

Joe Andrieu: +1.

Benjamin Young: +1.

Phillip Long: +1.

Ted Thibodeau Jr.: +1.

Will Abramson: +1.

Resolution #1: Adopt https://iherman.github.io/vc-overview/ as a Note-track work item.

2. Charter.

Ted Thibodeau Jr.: JoeAndrieu – ah, I had thought the diagram had been updated in the process of moving the lifecycle from the main spec to the UCR doc (which I thought had been completed?)…

2.1. Two years continued restrictions on deliverables is problematic (issue vc-wg-charter#114)

See github issue vc-wg-charter#114.

Joe Andrieu: There were decisions in Miami due to timing.
… I want to have that discussion.

Manu Sporny: The ACDC decision was not just about timing.
… We were trying to not add more work to the group.
… As for the two-year timeframe and no new work items, the reasoning was sound.
… We can do another 6-month extension.
… Why don’t we do things that don’t put enormous time pressure on the WG.
… We can do a two-year extension.
… We don’t want to see what happened to the DID WG happen to the VC WG.
… Resulting in another round of formal objections.
… We’re going to continue doing the work everyone agreed to do and finish it.
… We can recharter in 2025.
… Once we get done with our 11 work items, we can then think about rechartering.

Dave Longley: +1 to get existing work items done and then consider recharter on what to work on which will be a bigger discussion.

Dave Longley: (i.e., after current recharter which focuses on existing work items and just extending time).

Manu Sporny: We want to have that discussion in a way that enables broad feedback.
… The time to do that isn’t now when we’re a month away from charter expiration.
… We’ve made good progress.

Ivan Herman: The experience with our own community is that creating a new charter is subject to long and tedious discussions.
… Creating a new charter is a long thing.
… Even in the best of times, this requires ~6 months discussion.
… We need to finish what we’ve started.

Brent Zundel: and there’s no reason those discussions can’t happen anyway under the new charter.

Dave Longley: -1 to 1.5 years, let’s take the time we need and not repeat a problem there.

Ivan Herman: I don’t see anything happening on a new charter until January.

Manu Sporny: Plus, let’s remember that we have active incubation in CCG, work can proceed there.

Dave Longley: +1.

Joe Andrieu: We have a few things that are at risk.
… Confidence Method.

Ivan Herman: About two months ago there was a WG discussion.
… Does the WG want to make changes to published recommendation?
… New features.

Manu Sporny: It used to be possible to publish a note and convert it to a recommendation.
… That loophole has since been closed.

Ted Thibodeau Jr.: I think it matters that this new Overview Work Item is not entirely new content, but rather collects content from other less-optimal places where we’ve already largely written it.

Manu Sporny: Confidence Method and Render Method is right up there.
… We’re overloaded.

Dave Longley: +1 to getting existing work out the door and then look into recharter to add all of these great new things for the next phase.

Manu Sporny: I would personally -1 to new work until we finish what we’ve started.
… People have the chance to work on anything else in parallel.

Dave Longley: (and a number of those things will benefit from more incubation in the time frame).

Ted Thibodeau Jr.: Also note that while REC-track-in-progress should not be “parked” as NOTE, REC-track-in-progress can be “parked” as DRAFTs.

Manu Sporny: We could incubate these things in the CCG.
… That gives us a good argument to recharter with these things in scope.

Joe Andrieu: I think if we cannot include work that’s currently noted as at risk, I will oppose rechartering.
… We don’t need two years to finish what we started.

Manu Sporny: They’re not getting done because people aren’t doing the work.
… I’m hesitant to recharter presuming things are going to change.
… The FedID group is a good example.
… At the last minute they wanted to add digital credentials.
… The work hasn’t been incubated.
… Many of the extension points are in the category that we don’t know how long they’re going to take.
… We have to have an active charter to fix problems and publish updated specs.
… After we finish the 11 things, that’s when to discuss new charter items.
… We have extension points.

Dave Longley: asking to recharter to add more work is an item that has to happen and get consent at some point no matter what – clearly it will be easier to get that consent later than now (based on the comments here).

Manu Sporny: A working group isn’t required to use the extension points.

Ivan Herman: We have 1 month left in our charter.
… We have one shot at a 6 month extension.
… Or we can recharter for 2 years.
… Joe, what do you want?
… What is the chartering process you want at the W3C?

Joe Andrieu: I want the charter change.
… We’re conflating finishing our work and our maintenance role, preventing new work from being done.

Ivan Herman: At any time, we can decide what we want in a new charter and recharter.

Dave Longley: any existing work items can reach draft form only?

Dave Longley: (that aren’t already in CR).

Manu Sporny: I don’t know what new text you want in the charter.
… We can do an administrative extension or a full extension.

Michael Jones: The AC has already agreed to the scope of our current charter.

Manu Sporny: Once we add new things, there will likely be objections.

Gabe Cohen: +1 to what Manu said.
… Let’s take the easy option first.

Joe Andrieu: +1 is the six months “free” charter extension.

Gabe Cohen: Let’s also have a path to do new work like Confidence Method in the future.

Brent Zundel: We’re going to move on.

Ivan Herman: I plan to submit the existing charter text to the AC.
… All the issues should be clearly closed.

Brent Zundel: Joe, If we proceed with this charter, do you plan to formally object?

Joe Andrieu: I want you to enable adding new items in this charter.
… I can give you a list.

Brent Zundel: We are going to stop talking about this.
… Ivan, please request an administrative extension.
… If we can’t come to an agreement, we’ll be in an unknown state.

3. Work Item Status Updates/PRs.

Brent Zundel: Let’s focus on the work we are currently doing and get it done.
… Work item status and updates.

3.1. Add issue marker noting guidance about decoy values will be resolved in CR. (pr vc-bitstring-status-list#171)

See github pull request vc-bitstring-status-list#171.

Manu Sporny: If we can merge this today, we can include it in the snapshot for publication.

Manu Sporny: I will merge and integrate after this meeting.

Brent Zundel: You have approval to merge this after this call.

3.2. Make Conformance Classes a top-level section (issue vc-controller-document#7)

See github issue vc-controller-document#7.

Manu Sporny: We’ve had this discussion before.
… That’s why the conformance section is where it is.
… We can move it to a top-level section.
… I’m -1 to moving it later in the spec.
… We do refer to it early in the specification.

Michael Jones: as Manu said the things to conform to need reference at the front of the document. Should have statements of conformance before you are conforming to it.

Ivan Herman: My real concern is consistency.
… We have a family of recommendations.
… I didn’t realize that jose-cose was inconsistent.

Michael Jones: it’s not that it’s inconsistent.

Manu Sporny: I think it’s fine to define a concept and then elaborate on it later on.

3.3. Condense Accessibility Considerations section (issue vc-controller-document#8)

See github issue vc-controller-document#8.

Michael Jones: This spec doesn’t display them. We should cut it down to what is needed. If there are new UI considerations we shouldn’t introduce this an accessibility issue.

4. Resolutions