<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">
Peter,<div><br></div><div><div><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0; "><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); ">I have to admit to some (more) ignorance: I don’t know what an UX issue is.</span></p></span></blockquote><div><br></div><div>User interface. No shame here -- I had to look it up myself. :P</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0; "><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 221); font-size: 12px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: -1; ">In the shib vision of the world, a long list of entities metadata is compiled and signed as a file at URL at well-known “natural” prividers, rather similarly to themodel used for the the original internet host files, pre DNS....</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); "><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); ">What OpenID does seem to have done is use the web in the same role that DNS provided to the host file problem – liberate membership from centralized policy management.</span></p></span></blockquote></div><br></div><div>Having had static metadata for a long time, we've wanted to move towards decentralized metadata for a long time. When we really began to try it, however, we discovered that federations have been providing us a lot more than we thought they were: advertisement for services, a discovery mechanism for users, trust broker and legal framework, a discovery mechanism for providers, etc.</div><div><br></div><div>If federations were only for naming, we would have disposed of them long ago. There's much more than that to replace.</div><div><br></div><div>Our use cases require dynamic discovery that can bootstrap trust, legal, and advertisement frameworks. This is why I've been pushing for provider tagging alongside pure reputation services.</div><div><br></div><div>Take care,</div><div>Nate.</div></body></html>