[OpenID] OpenID; a single choice

[Nate Klingenstein]

Peter,

Unless you're talking about a separate EDUCAUSE initiative of which  
I'm unaware, you might mean InCommon, which is based primarily on  
Shibboleth and a profile of SAML 1.1 right now.  It's still growing at  
a good pace, but it's actually dwarfed by some of the federations in  
other countries for research & education, such as the not-to-be- 
abbreviated UK Access Management Federation for Education and Research  
and SWITCHaai.  A federation is a group of identity providers and  
applications(though some believe only identity providers) that agree  
to exchange resources and user data under a common trust framework.

http://www.incommonfederation.org/participants.cfm

Discovery is the biggest challenge in SP-initiated federated identity,  
and we've spoken of it for years as the "WAYF problem."  I don't think  
today's solutions are optimal -- certainly not button proliferation,  
and probably not user typing.  Cardspace-like technologies ameliorate  
a lot of problems, including this.  You can see a few of the large- 
scale approaches attempted so far at Microsoft's DreamSpark and  
Elsevier ScienceDirect (Windows LiveID registration required at the  
former; "Athens/Other Institutional Login" required at the latter).

http://channel8.msdn.com/
http://sciencedirect.com/

Applications serving smaller communities have smaller lists, buttons,  
or make specific presumptions.

Thanks,
Nate.

On 12 Mar 2008, at 15:21, Peter Williams wrote:

> We should look to the educause pilot, to see how effective sp- 
> initiated websso is, in the academic sphere - where each of 3000  
> colleges is logically an idp/op (only 30 tho, so far)
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Eddy Nigg (StartCom Ltd.) <eddy_nigg at startcom.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2008 8:06 AM
> To: tom <tom at barnraiser.org>
> Cc: OpenID List <general at openid.net>
> Subject: Re: [OpenID] OpenID; a single choice
>
> tom:
>> Is it only me that has an
>> issue with this given that before long pages will be covered with  
>> many
>> logos and that I'll end up having to search for the OpenID logo?
>>
>> I appreciate the "open" aspects of OpenID, but for the user would  
>> it not
>> be better to have the browser manufacturers agree on a way to store  
>> an
>> OpenID and auto-direct to my OP rather than giving the user a zillion
>> logos on a screen?
>>
> This has been anticipated and was obvious (even by design). OpenID has
> refused to address the issues of a trust point or federated network of
> OpenID operators and this is the result. There are and will be many
> sites which will trust only their own or a very narrow choice of  
> OpenID
> providers.
>
> When making these suggestions more then 1 1/2 years ago I was booed
> down....something about "taking away the freedom to operate randomly
> OPs" was mentioned many times. Well, you can blame these idiots today
> for refusing to address this issue, because, yeah...their freedom is
> going to be taken away by reality now,  and not by providing and
> organizing a framework which would have allow RPs to trust OPs  
> according
> to agreed rules and accepted standards. In a federated network of OPs
> and some established criteria everybody could trust anybody....
>
> -- 
> Regards
>
> Signer:  	Eddy Nigg, StartCom Ltd. <http://www.startcom.org>
> Jabber:  	startcom at startcom.org <xmpp:startcom at startcom.org>
> Blog:  	Join the Revolution! <http://blog.startcom.org>
> Phone:  	+1.213.341.0390
>
>
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