[Community] latest on Identity Commons 2.0

[Drummond Reed]

Brett,

Your question invites another: why did Identity Commons evolve when
organizations like Liberty Alliance already existed?

When this question has come up before, the answer has generall been: "The
Liberty Alliance membership structure and governance model was not developed
'bottoms up' to represent the users of user-centric identity."

If it was, then the primary representatives would be users, or working
groups representing the needs of users, very much like the primary
representatives in open source development projects are developers.

So, while the overall purposes of Identity Commons and Liberty Alliance are
closely aligned (as you highlighted in the session on Identity Commons at
the Vancouver Identity Open Space), the structure and governance model of
the two are different. 

The Liberty Alliance alliance is an industry consortium with formal
membership, dues, paid staff, and a central board. The Identity Commons 2
model, as it has been worked out over the past few months, is a 'bottoms up'
set of distributed, self-organizing working groups, each with their own
structure and governance models, knit together only by a common purpose and
principles, and by a Stewards Council to whom they contribute
representatives. The only role of the Stewards Council is to maintain shared
resources needed by the working groups.

(This self-organizing model is the heart of chaordic systems
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaordic), which was the inspiration for
Identity Commons 1.)

Under this self-organizing model, there is no central body to "coordinate
with external communities" or avoid duplication/confusion with their
activities. That's up to each working group. This is very similar to the way
open source projects operate. While there are exceptions, in general open
source projects do not compete, and code bases do not fork, simply because
it is not in their own self-interest.

>From this perspective, Liberty Alliance interop/evangelism efforts should
probably focus on individual Identity Commons working groups as they form,
and/or chartering of new working groups to represent specific pieces of
user-centric identity infrastructure that Liberty Alliance would like to see
adopted (e.g., the SAML URL/XRI AuthN Service working group -- item 5.7 on
http://wiki.idcommons.net/moin.cgi/WorkingGroupList.) 

=Drummond 

-----Original Message-----
From: community-bounces at idcommons.net
[mailto:community-bounces at idcommons.net] On Behalf Of Brett McDowell
Sent: Monday, August 07, 2006 6:32 AM
To: Eugene Eric Kim
Cc: community at idcommons.net
Subject: Re: [Community] latest on Identity Commons 2.0

I have a question of interpretation for the community list with a
follow-on proposal:

Question: Would it be consistent with the Purpose and Principles (as
crafted today in draft form) for IC2 to duplicate efforts of an
existing organization that is operating consistently with IC2's
purpose?

If yes, is that the desired outcome of the parties involved?

If no... (see proposal)


Proposal: That we add a new item under Purpose and Principles along
the lines of...

"To coordinate with external communities--operating consistently with
the Purpose of Identity Commons--to adopt/leverage the output of their
effort,  avoid duplication or confusion with their activities, align
working groups to share resources where possible and ultimately
accelerate the realization of common purpose." ("word smithing"
required)

Thoughts?

--Brett McDowell

On 8/4/06, Eugene Eric Kim <eekim at blueoxen.com> wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> We had a great call last Monday, our self-imposed deadline for figuring
> out our Purpose and Principles and a basic structure for moving forward.
>  You can see where we're at on the Wiki:
>
>   http://wiki.idcommons.net/moin.cgi/PurposeAndPrinciples
>   http://wiki.idcommons.net/moin.cgi/OrganizationalStructure
>
> and as always, the updated dialog map at:
>
>   http://blueoxen.net/c/boa/dmap/idcommons/
>
> Note that these are still in draft form.  We seem to have rough consensus
> on the calls and the mailing list discussion, but there are still tough,
> open questions about this structure.  In order to continue to get
> feedback while not impeding any work, we're now going to move into a
> "sandbox" mode.
>
> The goal is to start working as if the Purpose and Principles and the
> organizational structure were formally in place, so that we can
> experiment with the model in practice.  At the same time, we need to
> continue our discussions and refine the model.
>
> For starters, those you who want to form Working Groups should read the
> above URLs, then put together a draft charter on the Wiki.  We can then
> go from there.
>
> As always, share your feedback here or directly on the Wiki.  We're going
> to continue our weekly calls, but instead of Thursdays, we're moving them
> to Wednesdays at 9am PT, starting next week on August 9.
>
> Questions and comments encouraged.
>
> =Eugene
>
> --
> =========================================================================
> Eugene Eric Kim ................................... http://xri.net/=eekim
> Blue Oxen Associates ........................... http://www.blueoxen.com/
> =========================================================================
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>
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