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

[Martin Matthiesen <martin.matthiesen AT csc.fi>]

Hello,

I'd like to sum up this discussion, I guess we have exhausted the usefulness 
of email here. So I shall stay silent after this unless asked directly.

Jozef originally asked how to differentiate academic and non-academic IdPs. 
The idea of an entity catergory came up. Someone asked for a concrete use 
case and I presented the case of Clarin ACA 
(http://www.clarin.eu/content/license-categories). Currently in use at 
korp.csc.fi, where eduPersonAffiliation == faculty grants ACA access to a 
newspaper text corpus (HS.fi).

It has been known that EPA is not harmonised (Cormack & Linden: [1]). It 
seems the use of eduPerson* is also not restricted to academic institutions. 
Harmonised semantics have been requested for a long time, consider FIM4R 
(Kelsey 2012: [2], Kelsey 2013: [3], Wartel 2014).

Suggestions made, whether daring (harmonise!) or pragmatic (I make mappings) 
were met with he general sentiment: touching this is difficult, let's not 
touch the existing, let's make new definitions on top of the existing.

I'd like to conclude with a metaphor: You built a road without defining on 
what side the cars should drive. Now this needs to be defined and you say: 
prefer the right to the left, you will probably be fine, in most cases. But 
don't quote us on that, if you have an accident, it's your own fault. The 
result will likely be that your road will not be used very much. I would like 
to see some leadership here. Who, if not you, eduGAIN, can actually bring 
about changes in this area?

Martin

P.S.: Sweden actually did change the side of the road in the 60s (even 
against a popular vote), some wise folks foresaw that it would be much harder 
with every year they waited. They did discuss it for 40 years, though [5].


[1] http://www.terena.org/activities/refeds/docs/ePSAcomparison_0_13.pdf

[2] http://www.terena.org/activities/vamp/ws1/slides/0609-kelsey-fim4r.pdf
[3] http://www.redclara.net/news/DV/DVFD/Presentaciones/David_Kelsey.pdf
[4] 
https://rd-alliance.org/sites/default/files/Romain%20Wartel%202014-09-24%20RDA.pdf

[5] http://www.volvoclub.org.uk/history/driving_on_right.shtml