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

[Glenn Wearen <glenn.wearen AT heanet.ie>]

Martin
Your analogy is a good one, however, let me refine it; gaining a consensus on 
affiliation would be like asking *the world* to decide on driving on a 
particular side of the road, roads that already carry a lot of traffic in 
some parts.
Glenn

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> On 2 Dec 2014, at 08:07, Martin Matthiesen <martin.matthiesen AT csc.fi> wrote:
> 
> 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
>