(2004-07-07) Kim Identity Commons

Eugene Eric Kim on the Identity Commons work on Single Sign-On. Why not use URI-s (as E Name-s)? Two reasons: They're not persistent, and they're not user-friendly... The protocol looks just like any other Single Sign-On protocol, and in fact, will most likely resemble the Liberty Alliance and SAML spec even more closely over time... I wrote the Perl implementation of the client library, and there are currently PHP and Java versions as well. One way you can contribute immediately is to develop implementations in other languages (Python anyone?).

Update: he also connects the underlying protocols (XDI/XRI) to Purple Numbers. One of the limitations of Purple Numbers as currently implemented is that addresses are only unique in a local context. What we really want are globally unique, persistent Purple Numbers. That would allow me to transclude (Transclusion) a paragraph from another blog into this one. If that paragraph moves, the transclusion should still work. Guess what. XRI-s are globally unique, persistent addresses.