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

["Leif Johansson" <leifj AT sunet.se>]

> 28 nov 2014 kl. 17:44 skrev 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


agree - Doesn't mean it won't be useful...

> to every *academic*") for a couple of reasons, because using the identity 
> of the organization that owns an IdP doesn't givs 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
> 
> 
> 
>