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

[Leif Johansson <leifj AT sunet.se>]

> 
> That is also my experience. The question is, should it stay that way. It 
> might be enough and then it might be helpful to stress that in official 
> documents.
> This is yet another reason for me to concentrate on attributes and not make 
> up a second front on entity categories.
> 

This is a more interesting discussion. Basically its what Fredrik Åslund
just proposed: introduce a new affiliation which has no 'baggage'

There are issues with that plan too - one is that almost all software
commonly used (eg shibboleth) actually does content checking on the
original eduPersonAffiliation enum which means that a new affiliation
won't get traction until the next shibboleth SP release cycle.

The problem is that both 'staff' and 'faculty' means something very
specific or has no meaning at all. Just re-purposing one of them to
mean something else may be too hard.

Personally I think using 'employee' with a IdP-wide (organizational)
EC gets us 80% of the way. From there we could have a conversation
about a new affiliation.

We have to learn to slice the elephant!

        Cheers Leif