In Context

We’ve always claimed that Higgins is about a consistent card-based experience over whatever protocols have traction in the marketplace (not just CardSpace and OpenID). Well I’m happy to say that Markus Sabadello has just contributed the beginnings of a SAML 2.0 IdP to Higgins. All of the conversations over the years with folks like Gerry Beuchelt, Scott Cantor, Bob Morgan, Jeff Hodges, Peter Davis, Eve Maler, Connor Cahill, Brett McDowell, Uppili Srinivasan, Roger Sullivan are now bearing fruit. Any help and contributions from experts from the SAML community would be greatly appreciated.

Eventually this SAML work should bubble up to the UI as an “s-card“, a SAML 2.0 i-card. I also look forward to working with the SAML community to define the data format for an s-card (a new SAML profile I should think) and make it something every selector supports.

[Since Higgins is on a bomb run to get Higgins 1.0 out the door, this new effort will proceed quietly in parallel so as not to slow it down.]

In the interest of reducing confusion in the press and in the minds of folks new to user-centric identity, it would be better if we all used the same term for roughly the same thing. What we in the Higgins and other tech contexts call an identity agent is in the same ballpark as what Microsoft and others call a identity selector. So I’ve done a global search and replace on the Higgins and OSIS wikis. Everything now says “identity selector.” And in the long run people will probably just say “selector” just as “web browser” eventually became “browser.” This change will help folks understand what’s going on at next week’s interop event in Barcelona at Catalyst. Wish I could be there along with all of my friends and colleagues. Should be fun. Hope this helps.