Stefan Brands has created a fun way of distinguishing personal digital identity systems from enterprise federated identity systems - he uses a transportation analogy and classifies personal digital identity systems such as FOAF and LID as bicycles whereas SAML and Liberty are jet planes.
Under this taxonomy, I see LID as a unicycle - novel, but impractical and limited to people with a very specialized set of skills. As has been dissected in numerous other places (most expertly at Burningbird), LID's dependence on URLs as an identifier misses the mark in a number of ways - like a unicycle, LID is just not a useful way to get around.
SXIP would then be a Cessna - complex enough (with its hosted identities and 3rd party assertions) that you need a pilots license to use it, but not rigorous enough for a broad set of air travel requirements (e.g. SXIP is not based on standards).
SAML and Liberty as they have currently been implemented might be considered the space shuttles of identity.
The net/net of extending Stefan's metaphor this far....the status quo is inadequate and ripe for innovation on a number of fronts.
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Posted by: Robert | July 26, 2007 at 04:10 PM