Presence and IntComm WG

["Steven C. Blair" <>]

________________________________________
From: Peter Saint-Andre 
[]
Sent: Monday, July 07, 2008 5:21 PM
To: 

Subject: Re: [wg-pic] ongoing PIC.edu federation discussion

Deke Kassabian wrote:

> The major goals when considering federations was, I think, identity
> assurance in an inter-institutional way, and IM spam (spim) avoidance.

As mentioned, we really don't have spam yet on the network. We have some
small amounts of abuse in chatrooms, but those problems are fairly
easily solved through active room administration. It's still not 100%
clear to me what folks mean by or expect of "identity assurance".

[[scb]] In my opinion they mean that the authentication system used in domain 
someschool.edu confirms that user newstudent was able to provide verifiable 
credentials to join the domain. The presumption is that domains which receive 
traffic from 

 can assume newstudent's identity has been validated.



> The majority of those expressing an opinion, notably including Rodney
> McDuff (before the call), Peter Saint-Andre and Michael Gettes all
> appear to be recommending a very "low hurdle" for a variety of good
> reasons.  I think I'm coming around to this notion.  If PIC.edu had
> guidelines to those deploying, advice and best practices, perhaps we
> could avoid technical barriers to entry that will only tend to frustrate
> users and organizations and accomplish little.
>
> I think the goals are good goals.  I guess I'm concerned that if there's
> no hurdle at all and we want to create one or raise the bar a bit later
> we'll have trouble doing so.  That is, those who deployed PIC.edu with
> us in the early days but are unable or unwilling to get slightly more
> strict in terms of user authentication, chasing misbehaving users, or
> (much later) inter-institutional server-to-server authentication will
> make it harder for us to achieve this higher level without considering
> "kicking folks out" of PIC.edu.

IMHO, if you choose the same bar as is used on the open XMPP network,
then there really is no such thing as PIC.edu as an island in the
broader net. Whether you find that valuable or not is another question.
But it opens up possibilities to connect to the growing variety of XMPP
services out there.

[[scb]] While I don't necessarily know what this bar is all about I'd say set 
it at least as high as the bar used in the open XMPP network. PIC.edu as a 
project may want to demonstrate enhanced services with interconnections to 
the open XMPP network.


> Can we take that up in Thursday's discussion?

You betcha! :)

/psa