2024-09-04 Steering Committee Plenary Meeting Notes

Attendance

Steering Committee Members Attending and Participating 

• Daniel Bachenheimer (Accenture Global Solutions Limited)
• Steve McCown (Anonyome Labs)
• Andre Kudra (esatus)
• Wenjing Chu (Futurewei Technologies, Inc.)
• Drummond Reed (Gen Digital)
• Karla McKenna (GLEIF)
• Caryn VanExel (GS1)
• Nicholas Racz (Key State Capital)
• John Jordan (Province of British Columbia)

Also Participating

• Judith Fleenor (ToIP Executive Director)
• Michelle Janata (LF PM)
• Seth Newberry

Agenda 

• Recording
  • Link
• Presentation (Google Slides)

Call to Order
Judith Fleenor called the meeting to order at approx. 12:04 pm PT and announced the meeting would be recorded. There were no objections.

Approval of Minutes

Judith Fleenor presented a resolution to approve the minutes from the previous Steering Committee meeting (Exhibit A) August 14, 2024, and solicited questions from the group. There were no questions or objections. 

Judith Fleenor indicated that consensus had been reached and the following resolution was approved: 

RESOLVED:  That the minutes of the August 14, 2024 meeting of the Steering Committee, in the form attached hereto as Exhibit A, are hereby confirmed, approved, and adopted.

New Member Review 

Individual Contributor:

Trev Harmon

EFWG Announcement

EFWG will have a guest speaker Dr. Pramod Varma, Fmr Chief Architech India DPI, Co-Creator Beckn Protocol, Co-Autho The Fintenet. Presenting: India's Digital Trust Ecosystem, An Overview on September 5, 2024 at 20;30 IST/15:00 UTC / 08:00 PDT. 

DID Method Standardization Update

The Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF), W3C Credentials Community Group, the W3C DID Working Group and ToIP all signed a letter of intent and are joining forces to come to alignment on some DID Method Standardization.

Letter of Intent regarding DID Method Standardization.
 

Kim, put together to documents that are being worked on by the collaborators DID Method Standardization: Mission & Goals and Workplan: DID Method Standardization

Mathieu Glaude Will be playing the role of Liaison between this group and ToIP. Wenjing Chu has also volunteered to act as a Liaison between this group and ToIP.

Want to be involved? To stay informed about this effort, please sign up here: https://forms.gle/Cvsm8HfEdchmEr1a6

Keri Suite Working Group Charter Approval

After months of discussion at both the ACDC TF, the TSWG, and with the Steering Committee, it was decided that the ACDC TF has enough participation (an average of 20 people or more per meeting) to warrant being a full working group.

At the August 14th meeting of the Steering Committee consensus to officially invite the ADCD TF to present a proposed Working Group Charter for the KERI Suite Working Group (KSWG)

Email was sent August 26th and notice was made at the last SC meeting August 28th with Proposed Charter for the new ToIP Working Group called - KERI Suite Working Group.

The scope for this new working group reads:
The scope of the KERI Suite Working Group is to define (directly or by reference) the technical standards, test suites, application programmer interfaces, and interoperability certification standards for both current and future specifications that belong to the KERI Suite of specifications.

These currently include but are not limited to:

    * CESR Composable Event Streaming Representation

    * KERI Key Event Receipt Infrastructure

    * ACDC Authentic Chained Data Containers

    * KAPI KERI Application Programmer Interface

    * SPAC Secure Privacy Authenticity and Confidentiality

The KERI Suite Working Group specifications may include any specification that build upon or complements the current suite of specifications listed above or any others inspired by the design goals expressed in the  [KERI whitepaper] These include specifications for protocols that are compatible with true zero-trust security and decentralized governance that lead to trustworthy interactions over digital communications networks or are otherwise supportive of the design principles of the ToIP foundation.

Two Comments came in:
1 - from Wenjing Chu:
“I support the KERI WG. Based on the following description, I have a simple question related to the SPAC item in the scope list. I wonder if that would overlap with the current TSPTF, and if yes, how would the two be at least compatible or support each other.”

Nicho to give update

2 - from Karla Mckenna:
“I also would like to suggest that the task force for did:webs specification work is moved from the Technical Stack Working Group to fall under the scope of work of the new KERI Suite Working Group since the scope of this DID method pertains specifically to the KERI Suite.”

Discuss - OWF/W3C

Nicholas Racz has responded to these two questions after meeting with the ACDC WG.

Post SC Approval the following steps will need to be completed.
New Working Group will be added to the Website.

1. The JDF Document set for the member agreement will be updated to include the KERI Suite Working Group (KSWG)
   (Hopefully, In Conjunction with the new JDF Document set for LFDT.)
2. KSWG needs to elect their co-chairs and create their wiki page.
3. The ACDC TF will need to call for consensus to move their work into the new KSWG, an email notice must be sent out to all TSWG members to notify them of this intent.
4. The ACDC TF will need to formally ask the TWSG to move the work from their working group into the new KSWG.
5. The TSWG/KSWG will need to make any necessary changes to repos to reflect this change.

When JDF was asked to place the new WG charter into the JDF ToIP agreement concerns were brough up about how the formation of the new working group would affect the PAS process. For the specs that were developed at the ACDC task Force or Aka, the Technology Working Group Task force. Because these concerns were raised, Seth Newberry has been invited to this meeting.

Seth Newberry - architect of JDF LF/ISO PAS Process

Seth Newberry proceeds to convey the stance of the JDF. Seth Newberry explains that he will be putting this in context of the merger with the LF Decentralized Trust, as this needs to be the primary focus of this discussion. The more that you are churning things both in terms of scope, content and process prior to moving across to LFDT the more you run the risk of complicating that merger, because there needs to be a quiet period. Where, especially in a volunteer organization you need to give them (LFDT) time to absorb what's coming and who you are, and what your process is. The concern about transferring existing content from the TSWG to the New KERI WG is 1. You can not just pick of the content from the Tech Stack and ACDC because this is completed material. And if you have a contract with the people who contributed to that under the old scope what you can do is you can certainly create the new KERI working group, but its content should be incremental and new. What would happen is that you would reference the old specification that you did under the tech stack and then everything else that

would be new that you would put into the KERI working group and it would be new content, and it would normatively reference the old content. And the reason is that the people who contributed to the to it as the KERI spec under the Tech Stack working group contributed under that set that scope.  You can't just pick it up and move it into something with new scope, because essentially you violated the contract that you made with those people in the 1st place. This process takes time, and it takes notification. Seth states that I don't think you want to be in process with that kind of a transfer process while you're at the same time trying to find your footing inside the LFDT. This may have bearing on what you send to ISO. Seth’s recommendation on this is that the group should wait, and Seth makes it clear that this can be done but he is advising the group 1. Engineer what is new in the KERI working group compared to what was already created and then number 2. based on a good faith basis, because if you are getting ready to combine up with the LFDT this is not acting is good faith with what they are receiving. Seth reiterates that this is JDF’s opinion based upon what we understand and what ToIP is trying to do. This is not just Seth's opinion.

Opening the conversation to questions. Conversation continues with questions and answers.

New Working Group Approval

Judith asks the group if there are any objections to approving the new KERI Suite Working Group Charter and solicits questions from the group. There were no questions or objections.

Judith Fleenor indicated that consensus had been reached and the following resolution was approved:

RESOLVED:  That the KERI Suite Working Group Charter, in the form attached hereto as Exhibit A, is hereby confirmed, approved, and adopted.

LFDT Member Summit Registration

Register if you are planning to attend:
https://project.linuxfoundation.org/lfdecentralizedtrust-member-summit-2024

LF Decentralized Trust - Project Plan

Work Out New Charters

LFDT Charter for funding Members

ToIP Working Group Charters, for funding and non-funding members.

New Member -Technical processes for both:
GitHub, vs Website - AutoJoin, etc.

Judith/Daniela/Jory/Scott to work out details.

Jory has updated our JDF project charter for ToIP, to reflect the changes required to change ToIP to a project without sponsorship.  Once the KSWG Charter is added to the set, I will send it out to you for your review. Our Project Scope change will have to happen later due to the notices that need to be presented to members.

The LFDT sponsorship membership agreement will be on the LFDT website only.  Our website will need to have wording changed on our membership page to reflect how to join LFDT with a link to their website, and how to get involved at ToIP and sign our JDF documents on our website.

More details to be worked out.  UPDATE
Both the old and new set of JDF Documents was sent out to SC members with today's meeting agenda.  This update does not yet include the KSWG. However, we need to announce the call for consensus today on this first revision.

Call for Consensus announcement:
If no objections are sent via email to the Steering Committee email list by September 11th, this resolution will be considered approved.

BE IT RESOLVED: That the amended Joint Development Foundation, LLC Trust over IP Foundation Series Membership Agreement (DRAFT v.5.0.1 ToIP V1.5, 8.21.24.pdf), circulated to the Steering Committee email distribution list on September 4, 2024 is Approved.

LF Decentralized Trust - Project Plan

Onboarding processes

Putting new members in communications tools: Groups.io, Slack/Discord, Google Share Drives, Calendars, etc.

Judith/Daniela/Min Yu/David Boswell to work out details.

Judith has met with David Boswell, Ry Jones, Min Yue, w/Michelle to start working out these details to express the needs of ToIP and the onboarding process. Because the standard process is different than that of the normal process for LF Decentralized Trust Min had indicated that she would need to discuss these needs with Daniela to make sure it was possible for them to perform them.

Daniela Barbosa has updated Judith and let her know that having Min do the onboarding process will not be a problem.

Moving forward these are the things that will need to get done.

Zoom Rooms / Calendars

Move to LF Project Control Center (PCC)

Figure out how to link Public Calendar from PCC to Wiki Etc.

Michelle/Judith/Daniela/Min Yu and others as needed will work the details out.

Judith met with David Boswell, Ry Jones, Min Yu and Michelle. We asked how LFDT plans to configure PCC?  If we are going to have our own PCC set-up or be nested with an LFDT PCC set-up. It was brought up how would PPC Calendar be able to be put into a view on our Wiki, for just our project. It was also asked how subscribing to a calendar works, if nested under LFDT, would someone be able to subscribe just to ToIP calendar.

Awaiting replies to the questions posed to the group before we can move over to PCC Zoom Rooms and Calendars.

UPDATE:  Michelle and Min will work out a plan to move the group over to PCC.  We have invited Min to the September 18th all members meetings to meet the members and outline the plan.

If you have not already done so you will need to sign up for a LFX ID. Please do so here:

https://lfx.linuxfoundation.org/

Open Discussion

Steve McCown makes an official proposal to change the tech stack licensing, as has been previously discussed and do that all at once, and then, if we need to do this again in 2 weeks to add KERI suite into it.

Judith responds that this process would take a minimum of 60 days and what that would mean to the group is that if this is not approved today ToIP could not be part of LFDT until those 60 days are up. We can do both the tech stack and the JDF stuff together. But to switch it, switch the actual tech stack license it must go through the approval process.

Steve McCown states that “I object to a document entitled, Joint Development Foundation's Project, LLC. It gives a background. It was mailed to all of us right before the call entitled DRAFT v.5.0.1 ToIP V1.5, 8.21.24.pdf.”

After a lengthy discussion the group agreed to the following resolution.

BE IT RESOLVED that the Steering Committee approves the Technology Stack Working Group to begin the process of revising its charter to use the copyright, patent, and source code licenses under which it was originally chartered at the founding of the ToIP Foundation as quickly as the legal process and the necessary actions regarding contributions of existing work can be accomplished.

The resolutions will be sent out to the group for a 7 day approval process.

Next Meetings:

All Members Meeting
Wednesday September 19^th

10 am PDT / 1 pm EST / 17:00 UTC / 19:00 CEST

Steering Committee - Discussion Meeting

Wednesday September 25th

noon PDT / 3pm EST / 19:00 UTC / 21:00 CEST

Adjournment

At approximately 2:02pm PT, Judith Fleenor adjourned the meeting.