DID WG Telco — Minutes

Date: 2020-11-17

See also the Agenda and the IRC Log

Attendees

Present: Daniel Burnett, Brent Zundel, Ted Thibodeau Jr., Shigeya Suzuki, Ivan Herman, Amy Guy, Wayne Chang, Justin Richer, Dave Longley, Drummond Reed, Markus Sabadello, Jonathan Holt, dmitri, Joe Andrieu, Eugeniu Rusu, Orie Steele, Michael Jones, dpuc, Adrian Gropper, Kristina Yasuda, Juan Caballero, Wang Haiguang

Regrets:

Guests:

Chair: Daniel Burnett

Scribe(s): Drummond Reed

Content:

1. Agenda Review, Introductions, Re-introductions

Drummond Reed: Introduction from Ted Thibodeau (Tall Ted) - has been active at W3C for many years, recovering from colon cancer

Drummond Reed: Agenda review: recap of F2F, PRs, patent policy decision, editors presenting the plan moving forward with priority 1 and 2 issues, then priority 1 issues

Manu Sporny: does that include the PRs that have gone in for the data model

Daniel Burnett: Brent will cover those first

2. Special Topic Call

Drummond Reed: Special topic call will be Thursday at noon ET, the topic will be on equivalence properties

3. Face to Face Meeting Recap

Brent Zundel: F2F was two weeks ago. Very productive sessions. Covered privacy concerns, abstract data model, translation between representations…

Brent Zundel: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1RoE8E4y8S1j65EJaXZ8oihkduNbjTXXvdwtkzw961Xw/edit#slide=id.p1

Brent Zundel: how DIDs are being used today, went into new patent policy

Brent Zundel: https://www.w3.org/2019/did-wg/Meetings/Minutes/resolutions

Brent Zundel: that link is slide deck for all presentations during the F2F
… and the page where all the resolutions are registered
… resolved to add language to the spec to avoid privacy-violating properties
… we got much more concrete about what it means to ignore unrecognized properties

Justin Richer: I think it was really good for the group to be forced into concrete details about what it means to ignore a property
… it brought out a lot of assumptions
… so it resulted in a path that nobody is completely happy with but we can all live with

4. PRs

See github pull request #454, #455.

Justin Richer: a number of the resolutions resulted in two PRs
… 454 adds language about representation syntax that explains why properties for those
… this PR proposes language for the spec that clarifies that
… this PR has resulted in good conversation and has pretty wide approval so far
… so we would like to accept this PR as a good step forward

Daniel Burnett: normally with PRs we give a 7 day review window, however in this case we need this PR to move forward

Manu Sporny: We have a lot of positive reviews. I could quickly review it in 5 minutes.
… just noting that we have a lot more support for these PRs that we’ve had before. The editors are happy with them and I’m seeing a lot of alignment.

Daniel Burnett: Can we first see if there are any objections to merging?
… Is there anyone who would object to merging PR 454?

Michael Jones: I would object without some editorial corrections

Daniel Burnett: maybe we should talk about patent policy first

Jonathan Holt: PR 454 is still too abstract

Daniel Burnett: please add that comment to the PR

Ivan Herman: Since that PR puts in writing what was decided and resolved at the F2F. If it faithfully represents the decision at the F2F, then it should be merged.

Amy Guy: +1 what ivan says

Markus Sabadello: +1 to ivan. Note that we can also merge and then make additional improvements afterwards (e.g. regarding terminology).

Daniel Burnett: agrees

Michael Jones: The problem is that the PR does not faithfully reflect what was decided. It deletes the language about unrecognized properties must be ignored.
… If someone can go to the minutes and find the text, I will add that to the PR.

Justin Richer: I agree that this isn’t sufficient but it’s not meant to be complete yet. Same with the 455

Dave Longley: selfissued, https://www.w3.org/2019/did-wg/Meetings/Minutes/2020-11-05-did#resolution4

Daniel Burnett: thank you, that’s good input, we’ll return to this shortly
… and the editors can think about how to move forward with that input

Michael Jones: There was an earlier meeting - I think a special topic call - in which we resolved something like “Properties that are not understood MUST be ignored”. Can anyone locate that resolution?

Dave Longley: selfissued, in the last meeting we all agreed “ignored” wasn’t well defined, so we did this resolution: https://www.w3.org/2019/did-wg/Meetings/Minutes/2020-11-05-did#resolution4

Dave Longley: selfissued, that is the language that is in the PR now and it applies to all representations, not just JSON, hence the old confusing “ignored” language has been removed

Michael Jones: I found it: https://www.w3.org/2019/did-wg/Meetings/Minutes/2020-11-03-did#resolution2 : “Unrecognized properties MUST be preserved.”

Dave Longley: selfissued, and that is now in 454 in a more explicit way: https://github.com/w3c/did-core/pull/454/files#diff-0eb547304658805aad788d320f10bf1f292797b5e6d745a3bf617584da017051R2250-R2255

Dave Longley: selfissued, and it covers all representations.

5. Patent Policy

Daniel Burnett: we talked about this at the F2F about the new patent policy

Dave Longley: selfissued, we more clearly defined “ignore” and the new language is based on that

Daniel Burnett: we are encouraged by W3C to make a decision by the end of November
… this is the proposal
… is there anyone who has a question that must be answered before they can respond about this proposal?

Ted Thibodeau Jr.: As the chairs will find in their email, he doesn’t know that he can acquiesce to this because he’s not the AC rep

Daniel Burnett: each WG needs to make its determination about this.
… Ivan, that’s a good question
… if a WG needs to adopt something, then it can be passed by a vote of members at a WG meeting

Ivan Herman: We discussed it at the F2F meeting but did not act there so that WG members could talk to their AC rep.
… you, Ted, are in a special situation
… in general I would say that WG members had two weeks to discuss it with their AC reps

Ted Thibodeau Jr.: As a policy, this is very broken process

Ivan Herman: He can bring that back to the W3C management

Ted Thibodeau Jr.: I researched this new policy and it was hard to find information

Ivan Herman: This was discussed two weeks ago

Ted Thibodeau Jr.: This is not the way this process should be set up.

Daniel Burnett: This is all we as the WG can do. During the F2F meeting we provided a lot of information about the new patent policy.
… I’d like to suggest that you talk with Phillipe.

Ted Thibodeau Jr.: It’s outside of scope for this meeting. Ivan, if you would bring this back to W3C. It is broken in many ways.

Ivan Herman: The cleanest solution would be to recharter the WG.

Ted Thibodeau Jr.: It should not be a WG vote. It should be the AC reps for each participant in the WG.

Ivan Herman: The process is that if the WG decides that we want to go with the new patent policy, a separate process kicks in.
… every member of the WG needs to rejoin the WG, which has to be approved by the AC rep.
… so each AC rep can decide whether their organization will remain part of the WG or not.
… to start this process, the WG needs to vote.

Ted Thibodeau Jr.: It seems the default should be to remain with the 2017 patent policy.

Ivan Herman: The group can decide to remain in the 2017 policy, and that is indeed the default. The group discussed the possibility to move to 2020 two weeks ago.

Ted Thibodeau Jr.: In trying to prepare for this call, I was looking for a diff file between the two policies?

Ivan Herman: Brent did that comparison in the slides for the F2F meeting.

Brent Zundel: patent policy discussion starts at this slide: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1RoE8E4y8S1j65EJaXZ8oihkduNbjTXXvdwtkzw961Xw/edit#slide=id.g9b7a7df111_1_47

Daniel Burnett: I would like to get a decision today.

Ted Thibodeau Jr.: +0 to proposal, pending feedback from AC Rep

Daniel Burnett: We could actually give a week for comments and responses.
… We can always choose to adopt the policy later.

Ivan Herman: Any decision we make today is only valid one week after the decision. So if someone objects in that time frame, the decision is rescinded.

Daniel Burnett: If an objection occurs within the next week, the Chairs need to determine if there is consensus or not.

Proposed resolution: The DID WG adopts Patent Policy 2020 (https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20200915/) (Daniel Burnett)

Manu Sporny: +1

Brent Zundel: +1

Drummond Reed: +1

Dave Longley: +1

Joe Andrieu: +1

Daniel Burnett: +1

Shigeya Suzuki: +1

Justin Richer: +1

Markus Sabadello: +1

Jonathan Holt: 0

Adrian Gropper: +1

Ted Thibodeau Jr.: +0 to proposal, pending feedback from AC Rep

Eugeniu Rusu: +1

Orie Steele: +1

Ivan Herman: 0 (is not to take side on this)

Resolution #1: The DID WG adopts Patent Policy 2020 (https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20200915/)

Michael Jones: 0

6. PRs continued

See github pull request #454, #455.

Daniel Burnett: Suggests that Manu take over the discussion of 454 and 455

Brent Zundel: +1 to manu taking over the PR discussion

Manu Sporny: Maybe all we need to discuss is Mike’s concern
… I believe the concern is with 455. But if we can move forward 454, then we can get to your concern in 455.

Michael Jones: The text of two different resolutions needs to be included the approved resolutions. You can’t omit those proposals and still have the full effect of the PR.

Dave Longley: https://www.w3.org/2019/did-wg/Meetings/Minutes/2020-11-05-did#resolution4

Dave Longley: During the WG call, people were confused by the meaning of “ignore” and “preserve”.

Michael Jones: https://github.com/w3c/did-core/pull/454/#pullrequestreview-532550623

Dave Longley: so we then got to another resolution (linked above)

Manu Sporny: I meant 455 – 455 should be non-controversial (beyond the normal controversy).

Dave Longley: that’s what got moved into the Representation Requirements section
… so that’s what is going into the PR

Michael Jones: The text he cites. “Unrecognized properties must be preserved.”
… the other is that: “Note that the value of the @context member will be ignored if present.”
… the PR is not complete because it doesn’t include those two statements. If you can apply those two, I’ll change my review to approve.

Dave Longley: +1 to justin

Orie Steele: +1 to justin

Justin Richer: I think it’s important to note that this PR is moving language UP a level to where it belongs. This needs to be consistent across multiple representations.

Manu Sporny: +1 to justin

Dave Longley: +1 fine with adding the note to another PR

Justin Richer: We need to have the note about @context in the JSON section.
… if we can add that to this PR, let’s just do it and move on.

Dave Longley: +1 yes, let’s not the preserved language into the individual representation sections, agreed (i think the group agreed too)

Manu Sporny: +1 please don’t add that language back in… the new language is so much better.

Justin Richer: we absolutely must not add in the “unrecognized properties must be preserved” language SHOULD NOT be added back into the representation-specific sections because it belongs is in the overall requirements at that higher level.

Daniel Burnett: Reminder to everyone that the PR needs to just reflect what we agreed to.

Michael Jones: I’m fine with “Unrecognized properties MUST be preserved.” being added to the representation-independent section

Michael Jones: This is https://www.w3.org/2019/did-wg/Meetings/Minutes/2020-11-03-did#resolution2

Jonathan Holt: I think we have some outstanding issues about the ability to represent the abstract data model types.

Brent Zundel: that’s PR 455

Michael Jones: I’m fine with the resolved language about “unrecognized properties must be preserved” being added to the Representation Requirements section.

Justin Richer: +1 for this new language

Dave Longley: This is why Resolution #4 was incorporated. It is more specific and applies to all representations.

Manu Sporny: I’m not hearing any objections to PR 455. 454 builds on 455. These have been out for over a week now.
… 455 has no controversy.
… 455 applies a number of resolution that we made at the F2F.

Michael Jones: The resolution to 454 is just to add the two sentences he proposed. I have not read 455 yet.

Daniel Burnett: The week off last week was for meetings, not for PR review.

Manu Sporny: 454 depends on language in 455. 455 is the first one that should go in.

Daniel Burnett: let’s go to 455.

Ivan Herman: We are paying the price for having two different PRs. What I would do differently that normal, because there are no fundamental problems so far, is to merge both PRs now…
… or to merge the two PRs to avoid the messiness.

Daniel Burnett: let’s look at 455 first

Justin Richer: on 455, I left a comment about 40 mins ago that suggests a bit of tweaking for the property and type definitions. If that is accepted, I’m okay with this.
… there’s more to be done, but we can handle that in a future PR
… but this will give us the ability to work on that specifically. So I support merging both of these and then “taking the hose to it” afterwards

Manu Sporny: +1 to Justin’s suggested changes. Some of those changes have already been made.

Michael Jones: I just read 455 and I agree with Justin’s proposed changes.
… i think we should apply Justin’s changes

Justin Richer: https://github.com/w3c/did-core/pull/455/files#r525281650

Brent Zundel: +1 to applying Justin’s suggested text

Manu Sporny: reading the changes now…
… they are fine

Dave Longley: +1 to it

Dave Longley: +1 to justin’s change

Justin Richer: Yes, there was one specific change, very similar to what David Longley had as well.

Manu Sporny: I have merged Justin’s proposed changes in 455

Markus Sabadello: We may want to improve the terminology about how we describe classes of properties. But we can do that after this PR is merged.

Justin Richer: +1 to markus_sabadello’s point

Michael Jones: I’m not OK ignoring https://www.w3.org/2019/did-wg/Meetings/Minutes/2020-11-05-did#resolution2 - we should do this change and not delete the text

Brent Zundel: With both PRs, there is more to be done, but I don’t object to any of the changes these PRs bring.

Brent Zundel: that is 454

Justin Richer: that’s 454 not 455

Daniel Burnett: Manu, please write the proposal

Proposed resolution: merge PR 455 (Daniel Burnett)

Eugeniu Rusu: +1

Amy Guy: +1

Orie Steele: +1

Dave Longley: +1

Justin Richer: +1

Michael Jones: +1

Drummond Reed: +1

Ivan Herman: +1

Shigeya Suzuki: +1

Manu Sporny: +1

Brent Zundel: +1

Ted Thibodeau Jr.: +1

Joe Andrieu: +1

Adrian Gropper: +1

Resolution #2: merge PR 455

Michael Jones: I’m not OK ignoring https://www.w3.org/2019/did-wg/Meetings/Minutes/2020-11-05-did#resolution2 - we should do this change and not delete the text

Daniel Burnett: now switch to 454.

Michael Jones: Rather than delete the text, we need to make the change.

Justin Richer: Should we raise new issues for specific suggestions?

Daniel Burnett: please raise new issues

Brent Zundel: +1 to adding the text Mike is referring to

Justin Richer: I will do that

Daniel Burnett: Any comments on Mike’s request

Dave Longley: Could the chairs comments on whether Resolution #4 superseded Resolution #2? The latter had newer language to resolve the problematic language in #2.

Dave Longley: https://www.w3.org/2019/did-wg/Meetings/Minutes/2020-11-05-did#resolution2 https://www.w3.org/2019/did-wg/Meetings/Minutes/2020-11-05-did#resolution4 <– think these are the links

Dave Longley: and https://www.w3.org/2019/did-wg/Meetings/Minutes/2020-11-05-did#resolution3 also moves everything to common place

Daniel Burnett: I believe that Resolution #4 further refines the text of Resolution #2.
… Resolution #4 refines the text about consumption of an unknown property
… The resolutions are not expected to be precise spec text…
… so there can be additional text added

Michael Jones: Two different comments. The harder one is that the general statement about preserving unknown properties that needs to go into the Representation Independent section.
… but adding a note about @context should be in this section.

Daniel Burnett: Resolution #4 is a refinement of what “ignore” means. So the text may be in different text.

Ted Thibodeau Jr.: I believe that the explicit text change that was resolved should be applied as resolved. Then you can make another PR.

Daniel Burnett: At the F2F, we were making statements of intent.

Dave Longley: +1 to justin, can selfissued just add a note in a PR?

Justin Richer: I believe the text in the PR reflects the intent. We can also add an informative note about @context.

Daniel Burnett: We did discuss that at the meeting.

Michael Jones: We took 15 minutes to agree to add a Note. We need to add the note before merging 454.

Daniel Burnett: Sorry for not watching the time.

Brent Zundel: I’ve added a suggestion

Brent Zundel: to the PR

Daniel Burnett: Editors: we did agree to add an informative note into that section, so we need to do that.

7. Resolutions