On 20-Jan-06, at 8:50 AM, Johannes Ernst wrote:
I haven't seen a lot of discussion so far why the IETF needs to get
into identity standards. How does this group answer the question:
it's not like we don't have a plethora of widely implemented
identity and related standards already, why do we need another?
There was some discussion on this topic before you joined the list.
I'd think that question needs to be answered crisply and
convincingly in the charter.
This was actually in the first charter written (draft #0 if you like)
but
we were advised that it didn't belong there, so I took it out. This is
what it said...
Why should the IETF be involved?
The IETF's role is to provide an open venue and process within which
disparate interests can come together to agree on an interoperable
solution to this problem. There are multiple teams with the same
motivations working on similar solutions. For example: Sxip, LID,
OpenID, and Passel. We are driven by a desire to quickly solve a
shared problem for the benefit of all.
This is an Internet scale problem. Our work will benefit individuals
with an online presence who are currently hampered by a lack of a
ubiquitous and secure means to perform identity information exchange.
We envisage that every website could become a relying party and every
web browser could become a conduit for identity information.
Personally, I can believe that there is some hitherto uncharted
territory in identity land that the IETF could do something about,
Actually we should be in unchartered territory at all. We should be
just codifying existing practice.
(As the statement above says...)
but I would also think that that territory needs to be marked in
relationship to other territories by other initiatives, preferably
with very little to zero overlap. I'd recommend that be done from
the get-go, because otherwise dix just sets itself up for sniping.
I think we're fine so long as we focus on what the IETF is good at:
Internet Scale, Decentralization, Bottom-up Initiatives, User Driven,
Codification of Existing Practice, Engineering Focused, Rough
Consensus and Running Code! Things that have been driving your
efforts and ours...
John
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