There’s been a lot of back-and-forth about the demise of Microsoft’s CardSpace in the blogosphere. You could search it all down, but the best bet would be to read what the “father of Identity” (and the leading light behind InfoCard) has to say.
There’s been a lot of back-and-forth about the demise of Microsoft‘s Cardspace in the blogosphere. You could search it all down, but the best bet would be to read what the “father of Identity” (and the leading light behind InfoCard) has to say. Kim Cameron’s Identity Blog has a number of posts addressing the issue.
Ten years ago the topic that was enthralling us was LDAP. Not that it was going away (far from it) but that, I thought, it was being asked to do too much. There was quite a bit about it in January 2001 (see “ZORKing Identity”) but the discussion spilled over (way over) into February 2001.
IN THE NEWS: Princeton student discovers university LDAP server leaves personal data exposed
A number of people took issue with my call to move away from LDAP (and onto an XML based directory access protocol) so I addressed their issue in two different newsletters that month. What I said then (about LDAP) could just as easily apply to any of the current identity buzz word protocols (no, I won’t list them all, but CardCpace, and Claims-Based Access Control, could be one). Here’s what I said:
“The problem isn’t so much with LDAP itself, as it is a generic problem with all ‘quick and dirty’ solutions. Because they are quick and dirty, these solutions are easy to implement and use — so they proliferate until they are ubiquitous. But also because they are quick and dirty, they don’t have anywhere near the rich functionality people would like to see. And rather than design a properly architected, richly functional, extensible system it becomes easier to strain the bounds of the ubiquitous quick and dirty solution.”
Compare InfoCard and, say, Facebook Connect!
I then gave an example, which still holds:
“I can use Microsoft Excel as a simple word processor, and I can use Microsoft Word as a simple spreadsheet. But once I want to go beyond ‘simple’ I shouldn’t beseech Microsoft for more word processor features in Excel, nor for more spreadsheet features in Word — I should switch the focus so that I use Word and Excel for the purposes they were designed. So too with LDAP and XML. Confusion ended, I hope.”
IETF, Oasis, Kantara Initiative, Identity Commons — all please take note.
