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

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

Hello,

[...]

> That, and the fact that sometimes not all parts even within a single
> university can agree on a detailed definition of what a "student" is
> covering all corner cases (to chose just one example of an affiliation
> value, and one of the less problematic internationally). In some
> countries that may be defined by law, making it convenient (and
> sensible) for actors in those countries to outsource the decision and
> just re-use that defintion. But of course other countries may have
> other defintions equally grounded in different laws. Now, who will
> give up compatibility with their local definition and adopt a
> different regime, to satisfy the desire of "the global research
> community" for semantic harmonisation?

In my view we are not on that level. We are on the level, that say Sweden 
agrees what a professor is, but does not want to give it the quite well 
defined "faculty" attribute.
And by the way, we should not go to the level you laid out above. We accept 
each others cars on each others roads with our respective driver's licenses. 
Full knowing that the requirements for a license or MOT are not the same 
everywhere. (to strech my traffic metaphor even further.) But we do have 
similar road signs. Sometimes in different colours. When it gets important we 
agree on colour semantics (like traffic lights).
 
> Now look away further from a single institution, region or country,
> across continents and cultural barriers. We probably don't have a
> shared understanding of what "peace" or "enough to eat" means, what
> makes you think "we" will have a globally shared definition -- and
> incidently one that just happens to match your specific use case
> exactly -- of what "an academic" is?

If my contract says: Open for "academics in good standing" without 
registration (explicitly excluding students) and all parties accept that 
there are slight differences in definition, I see no problem. We don't need 
to overengineer here.

> 
> What I'd like to see is a sufficiently detailed writeup of the
> requirements of the license agreements in your use case, in a way that
> can be easily operationalzed globally and federation operators can
> help institutions the world over to map local/internal data structures
> onto a shared eduPersonEntitlement value for your use case.

I don't have a copy at hand, and if I had, I would not want to go to that 
level. The agreement allows for "faculty", it might allow even for 
"employee". Agreements require interpretation too, as most lawyers would be 
out of work otherwise. But that in turn requires that these attributes are 
half-way defined and used as defined. And set in the first place.

> (If they can be made to care about your use case, that is. Which we
> cannot guarantee either, which undoubtedly you will blame NRENs for
> too, that we cannot mandate autonomous institutions to do what we want
> them to.)

THIS is the crux that I see very clearly. We can discuss here until we are 
blue in the face and even if we reach an agreement it will not fly. What we 
need is an understanding of a proper process that is a bit more binding than 
the present one. We (as a society) managed to do that with driver's licenses, 
passports, air port security even mobile chargers and GSM. We can land on 
comets. I will not accept that this problem here is unsolvable. If eduGAIN is 
not the right place to solve it, what other place could it be?

Regards,
Martin