InCommon Technical Discussions

[Scott Koranda <>]

> What’s the underlying use-case driving this proposal?  Are you trying
> to lessen the experience for the 300 in hopes they join the 100?  Are
> you trying to show vendors / other VOs the value prop by saying, “Look
> at these 100 places you can easily work with?” Is this really more
> about making your discovery interface automatically/easily
> include/exclude IdPs that meet “best practices”? Personally, I don’t
> think dividing InC into multiple federations/aggregates is the right
> answer, house divided and such, so I’m trying to understand what’s so
> impossibly horrible about the state of things today that the answer is
> to basically start over?
> 

Hi,

Leveraging InCommon to support large research projects that scale across
many institutions, such as LIGO, is difficult and takes a large
investment that many projects cannot or will not make. Few do so today.

The evidence for that is well known and accepted. I will not repeat it here. 

I think that InCommon has the potential to be the de-facto substrate for
identity management for research projects in the US, but it is unable to
realize that potential so far. Attribute release has long been the
primary concern. Despite more than 5 years of effort (yes, it really has
been that long since the R&S entity category was proposed) only 140 or
so campuses participate, and many of those (82) will not release attributes
to SPs not published by InCommon.

I am attempting to provide "food for thought". Take it as you will.

Scott K for LIGO