An open discussion list for topics related to the eduGAIN interfederation service.

[Ian Young <ian AT iay.org.uk>]

> On 28 Nov 2014, at 16:10, Peter Schober <peter.schober AT univie.ac.at> wrote:
> 
> *But* I think we have heard several reasons why (a) focussing on the
> SAML IDP (or even the institution) may not be useful, and (b) coming
> up with a shared/common understanding of the membership criteria for
> such a category is highly unlikely to happen.

I have to agree, although I'm open to be persuaded by an actual implementable 
definition that matches what people want to do.

An IdP entity category could obviously be part of that, but I believe that an 
"academic IdP" category is not going to be the answer (at least to the stated 
goal of "connecting to every *academic*") for a couple of reasons, because 
using the identity of the organization that owns an IdP doesn't give you a 
perfect match with academic *users*. Not all accounts at an "academic IdP" 
are going to be associated with "academics", and some "academics" have 
accounts in places we wouldn't be likely to think of as "academic" IdPs.

So to answer the stated use case, you need to combine:

* A way of distinguishing IdPs that are trusted to assert that a particular 
user is "academic" (this could be an entity category, but it would have to be 
broader than Leif's straw man), and

* A vocabulary for such an IdP to assert that a particular user is an 
"academic".

Like I said, this is a hard problem. I'm with Peter in thinking that it's 
probably close to insoluble as stated. To make progress, we'll probably find 
that we have to accept some shift in the boundaries of the use case.

    -- Ian

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