PETE WILL INFOCARD ENABLE HIS SITE

More from Pete Rowley at Red Hat:

Kim Cameron has blogged about a conversation we have been having recently about the OSIS (Open Source Identity Selector) project. Negotiations have been underway for many months in order to get to a point where all parties are comfortable that legal and other issues are in order. I am happy to say that Red Hat has been involved with this process from the beginning.

I agree with Kim on the importance of the participation of Red Hat. As the leading Linux distribution it provides a platform for the project and a significant distribution channel, all things required for ubiquity. Ubiquity and cross platform support is a major goal for OSIS and the identity meta-system in general.

When I met with Paul Trevithick and Mary Ruddy some months ago to discuss Higgins it was clear to me that there was an alignment in project goals. Architecturally Higgins represents an uncannily good fit so I am very pleased to see the client effort folded into the Higgins project. Perhaps Higgins suitability is not so surprising given the exchange of ideas and collaboration that has been going on in the identity gang.

In the coming months I hope to be in a position to enable support for information cards on this site with end to end open source software. Watch this space.

That's very cool.  Which reminds me that someone asked me to start an I-roll for early sites that support Information Cards. 

 

RED HAT SUPPORTING OPEN SOURCE IDENTITY SELECTOR

The Identity Mashup held last week at the Harvard Law School lived up to its name.  There were an endless number of nooks and crannies and people with different trajectories talking and braintorming both in and between the sessions.

A lot of important things happened.  I've already mentioned one key development:  the anouncement of an Open Source Identity Selector project (OSIS).  If you are new to the identity conversation, an Identity Selector is the steering wheel of user-centric identity – the way people select the identity (visualized through what we call an Information Card) appropriate to a given context.  OSIS will create an equivalent to what CardSpace does on Windows.  It's therefore an essential piece if we want to build an identity metasystem that reaches across platforms and devices,    

But there's another deeply significant development:  Red Hat, which lays claim to being “the world's most trusted provider of Linux and open source technology”, will be one of the key participants.

Why is this so important?  First, because it helps bring us closer to a metasystem which truly reaches across all platforms.  Second, because RedHat's participation is emblematic in conveying the idea that Information Cards really represent an open technology and a rallying point for the industry.  Web sites can now add Information Cards and be confident they won't be accused of herding their customers towards any given platform. 

As Pete Rowley said in explaining Red Hat's decision to participate, “With so many companies collaborating on the project it is clear that this is an important piece of the identity puzzle and that the industry recognizes the opportunity to work together for the common good.

“The open source movement is much more than just Linux and we're seeing significant interest from customers and the community in building a common framework for identity interchange on the internet. 

“Like TCP/IP – having a common framework takes more than a standard to encourage adoption – there must be an express need and a community of use to embrace and extend – and with the number of folks worldwide now sharing conversations, there's an express need for easily confirming that you are conversing with who you think you are.

“Seeing the democratization of content take place on the Internet I am convinced that  with the advent of ubiquitous user-centric identity systems there will be a sea change in the services offered and the way we use the Internet.”

Wow.  I love this guy.  I think I can hear the identity big bang starting just beyond the horizon.  Hold on to your seats. 

OPEN SOURCE IDENTITY SELECTOR ANNOUNCED

From ZDNET, a post by Phil Windley from the Berkman ID Mashup held over the last few days at Harvard Law School:

David Berlind's not the only member of the Between the Lines team at the ID Mashup this week.  I've been here as well, watching the identity happenings.  The first two days were traditional conference style, but the third day of the workshop was done open space style.  That's a great format for generating discussion and this example was no exception.  I went to a session on reputation first thing that resulted in some very good ideas and principles on that important subject.

The second session I attended was a discussion of OSIS, the open source identity selector project. This project has server and client pieces as well as a security token service (STS). The server side pieces of OSIS will be part of the proposed Heraldry project at Apache. The primary purpose of Heraldry is to provide a home for open source identity projects, like OpenID. The client code and STS pieces will be part of the Eclipse Higgins project.

OSIS is more than just a small project to build open source identity selectors for Microsoft's CardSpace (formerly InfoCard); after all, that's been done. OSIS will support interoperability between the addressable identity systems (OpenID, LID, XRI) and card (or token) based identity systems (more notably CardSpace and Higgins). OSIS has the support of all of the major players (including Microsoft, Novell, IBM, SXIP, XRI, and Verisign).

This is really a historic development in the Internet identity space. Microsoft, before their own implementation of CardSpace even ships, is linking up with the larger identity community, including OpenID, LID, i-Names, and Higgins. Make no mistake, they've been participating and giving leadership to that community for a long time, but until now, it wasn't clear that all the various systems would be interoperable. OSIS aims to change that.

I don't actually agree with Phil's notion that “this has already been done”.  But I agree it will be.  The list of individuals and companies participating in OSIS is a who's who of important contributors. 

Why not? The conference was full of remarkable milestones.  I'll talk about some of the high level issues in subsequent posts.

But in terms of concrete and immediate progress, Michael McIntosh of IBM showed how he could use a Higgins “i-Card” to log in to my identityblog site.  I know Michael and Paul Trevethick (from Social Physics) worked really hard to show skeptics that we throughout the industry are really coming together to make identity work across platforms. 

In another demo, we saw more of Paul's work around an “information broker” – I”ll try to find a detailed writeup somewhere.

And to top it off, we got an eye-opening presentation by Montreal's Louise Guay.  Her My Virtual Model is a must-see. Louise is a real visionary.  Doc was reeling.  For example, she offers us a personal avatar – you set it up with your measurements and characteristics and use it to find outfits with the look you want.  And guess what?  People are actually using it.  And I'm just brushing the surface of her thinking.

Beyond the “cool factor” is the fact that she is turning marketing upside down.  She's fully aware of the relationship between her avatars, the people who use them, and the great identity issues of our age.  These are social artifacts people can share with their friends, but are also respectful of privacy – allowing us to get access to unprecedented personalization without sharing any identifying information.