Per http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-vocabs/2014Aug/0008.html the rough consensus of discussion leads us to proposal 'Beta' in https://www.w3.org/wiki/images/7/7e/ProviderSellerVocabularyRe-DesignProposal.pdf

"Proposal Beta
This alternative proposal attempts ... to use only the existing vocabulary. The changes instead would be
in the descriptions associated with existing terms and intended usage model.
● Leverage the existing 'provider' property to describe the service provider, service operator, or
service performer (see provider in exchange model) and update its description to more clearly
indicate this intended usage;
● Leverage the existing 'seller' property to describe the entities which sell or offer a service on
behalf of the actual service provider (see seller in exchange model). In the case of flights, this
would be the airline through which a flight was booked. If a 'seller' is not provided, it is assumed
the 'provider' is also the 'seller'.
● Introduce a ‘broker’ property to describe entities that map to the broker concept in the
exchange model.
● deprecate ‘bookingAgent’ in favor of the more generic, newly proposed ‘broker’ property
● deprecate 'vendor' in favor of re-using 'seller'
● deprecate ‘merchant’ in favor of re-using ‘seller’
● deprecate 'carrier' within Flight and ParcelDelivery in favor of using the newly described
'provider'"

See W3C Wiki for mid-level-detailed changes: https://www.w3.org/wiki/WebSchemas/SellerVendorCleanup#Changes_proposed

I've made a cut at an implementation - sdo-sellerbroker in my github repo, pull requested here (although needs some work on examples). See https://github.com/danbri/schemaorg/tree/sdo-sellerbroker

I've created a mid-level description of the implementation details to
guide the RDFS work - in W3C's Wiki at https://www.w3.org/wiki/WebSchemas/SellerVendorCleanup#Implementation_Details

This is more detail than needed for the release notes or the high level PDF, but less than the full github RDFS horror.

I've put a test build including this content (and Periodicals) up as
'sdopending', so see:

(main properties)
http://sdopending.appspot.com/seller
http://sdopending.appspot.com/provider
http://sdopending.appspot.com/broker

(superceded properties)
http://sdopending.appspot.com/bookingAgent
http://sdopending.appspot.com/vendor
http://sdopending.appspot.com/merchant
http://sdopending.appspot.com/carrier

Note that in this case I have changed the definitions of these last 4
to explicitly indicate they're superceded, even though we have UI that
shows this within the per-type pages. I will get similar UI added to
per-property pages, however in this case I think it is worthwhile not
having obsoleted definitions floating around confusing things. I've
therefore also copied the old text into the Wiki so that a version is
reasonably accessible if anyone is curious.

Tomorrow I will try to go through the examples and update them accordingly.

circulated to public vocabs - http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-vocabs/2014Aug/0163.html

Regarding examples, from a quick grep-based look, we only have examples for 'seller', 'provider',
'carrier', and only the latter is obviously in need of an update. That's a relief (although obviously more examples would be healthy!).

Shipped as part of v1.9, http://schema.org/docs/releases.html#v1.9