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w3c-ccg / did-wg-charter

An EXPERIMENTAL charter for the W3C Decentralized Identifier Working Group
https://w3c-ccg.github.io/did-wg-charter/
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General: current language precludes DIDs/methods leased from an authority #16

Closed nadalin closed 5 years ago

nadalin commented 5 years ago

"DIDs are controlled by individuals, organizations, and machines, not leased from an authority (e.g. DNS Registrars). "

You can't preclude that I don't want to have a DID controlled only by a individual, so

"DIDs maybe controlled by individuals, organizations, and machines"

kimdhamilton commented 5 years ago

I agree to the "are controlled by" -> "may be controlled by" change.

We may have to soften the latter part of the sentence too, e.g. "not necessarily leased from an authority". (But there's probably a better way to express that...)

nadalin commented 5 years ago

@kimdhamilton My point is that someone may want a DID from a central authority, this specification should not exclude that

jandrieu commented 5 years ago

FWIW, there's significant opposition to this from the spec editors. I don't happen to agree, but we should bubble up the debate to see if we can get consensus. https://github.com/w3c-ccg/community/issues/65#

peacekeeper commented 5 years ago

@kimdhamilton My point is that someone may want a DID from a central authority, this specification should not exclude that

If people want identifiers from a central authority, no problem. Verifiable credentials, agents, data stores, etc. should be open to work with any kind of identifier people want to use. But it's not a "Decentralized Identifier" (DID) if it's from a central authority.

mitfik commented 5 years ago

@kimdhamilton My point is that someone may want a DID from a central authority, this specification should not exclude that

If people want identifiers from a central authority, no problem. Verifiable credentials, agents, data stores, etc. should be open to work with any kind of identifier people want to use. But it's not a "Decentralized Identifier" (DID) if it's from a central authority.

Agree with @peacekeeper you can easily connect your DID to existing centralize identity through Verifiable credentials by asking for centralize authority to verify that you are in control of that DID. This way you can easily achieve kind of bridge between centralize and decentralize identity. For example we are planning to do that with certificates issued by government to create verifiable credential for newly created DID with platforms compatible wiht eIDas. Many countries especial in Europe already have similar systems in place.

Allowing centralize entity to generate DID for their customers/employees/citizens miss the point of DID effort. If you want to do that you can easily relay on existing systems like CA. If the Identifier is in control of someone else than the entity which is using it there is no point of using DID for that at all in my opinion.

jcnelson commented 5 years ago

@nadalin Did you create an account just to troll this working group?

jcnelson commented 5 years ago

@mitfik It's not a DID if it mandates a particular administrative domain for handling resolution.

nadalin commented 5 years ago

@jcnelson This is not a WG, please review what is a WG and what is not https://www.w3.org/Consortium/activities

jcnelson commented 5 years ago

I'll take that as a "yes."

kimdhamilton commented 5 years ago

I think we are all speaking past each other.

There's the question of whether the Decentralized Identifier specification should enable interop with centralized systems. In my understanding, the "yes" camp believes interop will contribute to the success of Decentralized Identifiers, but this comes with an associated risk of being dominated by centralized approaches.

There is healthy debate happening on this in the context of proposed method specs like did:https and did:facebook, as Joe mentions above. These are more extreme examples, and there's a slightly more nuanced discussion forming in #20.

My claims:

I personally think these are difficult questions for the DID working group to tackle, and that's it's premature to rule out the option of bridging with "centralized" systems.

However, if the ongoing debate has progressed to a concrete proposal, it should be presented for consideration.

Update: I see a better discussion happening in https://github.com/w3c-ccg/community/issues/65

Let's move that specific debate there. This thread has turned into a dumpster fire because it lacks context

nadalin commented 5 years ago

@kimdhamilton Would be better for discussion to continue here as there are folks that are not part of CCG

jandrieu commented 5 years ago

Good point, Tony.

This charter is developed under the CCG IPR. You really should join if you would like to make substantive contributions.

Joachim16 commented 5 years ago

@kimdhamilton I can see your points... and I agree that we need to have this discussion and come to at least "consent". I just would like to point out that we probably have different mindsets around the table: Web2 and Web3. The proposal is understandable that from a Web2 perspective. Web2 parties would like to enable interop between centralized systems (Web2) and decentralized systems (Web3) - or at least connect to Web3 in one way or another. What really interests me is the motivation for such proposals. As you described Kim, one argument could be that the "yes" camp believes interop will contribute to the success of DIDs, however the question to every proposal should be who would and should benefit from them. this needs to be made very transparent and then we also can come to a very constructive and proper solution... hopefully in "consent"

kimdhamilton commented 5 years ago

clearly define the ideal, point to rubrics as reference for analyzing (these are input that will be refined during WG). Use this to describe how we may need to vary for bridging to existing methods

msporny commented 5 years ago

The group discussed this on the 2019-06-27 call and agreed with the change. The group merged https://github.com/w3c-ccg/did-wg-charter/pull/27 to effect the change. Closing.