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Subject: RE: [imi] Feedback on "metasystem"
I just sent this reply into the broader public discussion on
this topic: Naming is hard and often
names are chosen because they’re “good enough” rather than
because they’re perfect. In this case, I think an
analogy from another OASIS TC is probably illustrative. There’s an
OASIS TC called the “Security Services TC”. It mostly works
on SAML. I don’t think anyone believes that everything related to a
broad definition of security services must take place in that particular TC. Similarly, there now being an
OASIS TC called the Identity Metasystem Interoperability TC whose first work
output has to do with Information Cards doesn’t mean that anyone in the
room believes that Information Cards are the totality of the Identity
Metasystem. (For starters, there are no less than 3 OpenID board members
participating in the TC, as well as participants from the SS TC and the XRI
TC.) I believe that the IMI name was chosen to be inclusive and because
it had less problems than other names proposed. Nothing much deeper than
that. I’ll affirm David is
completely right that Kim and I view Information Cards as being one of the components
of an Identity Metasystem and that plenty of other valuable technologies are
also a part of it. The name of the IMI TC doesn’t change that or
the broad vision that I think we all share in helping to build an Internet
Identity layer that spans platforms, devices, and use cases. Hope to see many of you at
IIW next month where I expect more collaborative work to occur towards
accomplishing just that!
Cheers,
-- Mike I don’t believe there’s sufficient reason for us to
consider changing the TC name. It’s good enough and far better than
many of the alternatives. --
Mike From: Drummond Reed
[mailto:drummond.reed@cordance.net] +1. Before we look at changing the name of the TC, I think we
should discuss defending the use of “identity metasystem”, i.e.,
explain how we are chartered to provide a generalized form of identity claims
transmittal using information cards as the user experience metaphor. =Drummond From: John Bradley
[mailto:jbradley@mac.com] I am not especially worried about the name. The Security Services TC isn't claiming all of the security
space to itself. Perhaps some spin like. The IMI-TC is working to
establish the interoperability of information-cards within the Identity
Metasystem. On the other hand I am
not emotionally attached to the name ether. I would prefer this not to divert us from real work. Given the number of openID board members and active
participants involved in the IMI-TC it is hard to characterize the TC
as dismissive of openID. We should clarify but we should get some broader feedback
before thinking about a name change. =jbradley On 6-Oct-08, at 10:32 AM, Marc Goodner wrote: Naming is hard. There was never that much intent behind the name
of the TC in any of the discussions I was involved in. This was the best name
that was proposed. At least one proposal would have been pronounced
“icky” and no one liked that. No one ever noticed that the one we
landed on might seem to exclude others. It certainly was not the intent. I’ve checked with the OASIS staff, changing the name can
be done. Since we already approved the charter this will require a special
majority ballot that the staff has to setup. If we have a name people prefer at
the call next week this could be taken care of by IIW. Note that for infrastructure reasons we might be stuck with the
TC short name of IMI. If so that string would remain in our email name and
URIs. Mary is looking into this. Suggestions please. From: Drummond Reed [mailto:drummond.reed@cordance.net] Other TC members have probably seen this wave of questions asking
us to clarify our use of the term “metasystem”. Ideas for how (and who) should best respond? =Drummond From: community-bounces@idcommons.net [mailto:community-bounces@idcommons.net] On Behalf Of Robin Wilton Along the same lines as David's
point: it seems incongruous to me to have the term "metasystem" in
the title of a standard, where (as David notes) the specification actually
deals with to (i) the identity selector and Information Cards as conceptualised
by one vendor. By analogy, a "meta-language" is not itself a language
or a part of a language: it is a means for describing the characteristics of
languages. Excellent point. I, too, am really
baffled by the choice of term here. Thanks, David, for speaking up. Perhaps the goal of the OASIS TC
is indeed the *entire* set of identity technologies out there, not just the
card / WS-* subset of it? On Oct 5, 2008, at 21:27 , David
Recordon wrote: So, I want to make sure I'm not
misunderstanding something. An OASIS TC is going to create a
specification for "Identity Metasystem Interoperability" using
Microsoft's Identity Selector Interoperability Profile (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b94817fc-3991-4dd0-8e85-b73e626f6764&displaylang=en) and OASIS' WS-Policy Guidelines (http://www.w3.org/TR/ws-policy-guidelines/) and
WS-Addressing (http://www.w3.org/Submission/ws-addressing/) specifications. All of these
being based around Information Cards yet being described as the Identity
Metasystem. Mike, Kim, and others have done a
great job the past few years introducing Information Cards and explicitly
acknowledging them as being *a part* of the Metasystem. Is this TC's name
and the specification that it plans to produce then not a tad dismissive
of all the work the rest of the identity community has been doing the past few
years? (Please don't interpret this as my attacking the people involved in
the TC or the work it plans to do, just trying to understand why it is being
named the way that it is.) --David On Oct 2, 2008, at 7:33 AM, Mike
Jones wrote: The OASIS Identity Metasystem Interoperability Technical Committee
(IMI TC) had a successful first meeting on Monday and Tuesday this week.
Here’s a brief summary of what was decided. Tony Nadalin of IBM and Marc Goodner of Microsoft were selected as
co-chairs of the committee. Mike McIntosh of IBM and yours truly were
selected as co-editors for the committee. There is consensus in the working group on what we want to do, how
to do it, and that it should be done quickly. Specifically, the TC agreed
to: - Combine the ISIP 1.5, Web Guide 1.5 and WS-Addressing
Identity specs into a single document using OASIS formatting conventions. - Title the document to match the TC name: Identity
Metasystem Interoperability 1.0. - Ensure the output remains backwards compatible with ISIP
1.5 and the Web Guide 1.5 so as not to break existing Information Card software
implementations. - Close on a committee draft of the combined document to
post publicly before IIW (Nov 10th) and socialize it with the participants. - Collect feedback through the TC comment list and address
it. - Create a separate non-normative commentary document based
on the ISIP Guide that will not become a formal standard. In addition, the TC will accept input from the SAML TC and work
with them on creating a profile for using SAML 2.0 tokens in Information Cards. No real surprises here. And that’s a good thing.
Yours from London,
-- Mike _______________________________________________ _______________________________________________ -- Corporate Architect - Federated Identity CTO Office (Business Alliances) robin.wilton@sun.com Tel: +44 (0)705 005 2931 http://blogs.sun.com/racingsnake |
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