Proposal
There is an idea whose time has come, among many internet developers. It has two basic concepts. First, that there is a need for a system of distributed cross-application user authentication. The second, even more important concept, is that if users could be in control of how third parties are able to use information about and/or generated by them, i.e if users owned their own data, many important benefits would ensue.
There are many players making efforts to create and market such technology, ranging from big corporations to grass roots developers and open source communities. This chaotic scenario has left some early adopters dismayed, unable to know which solution is going to "win". The uncertainty is surely inhibiting progress.
Healthy competition requires structure. A sport requires a rulebook and referees, a marketplace requires a rule of law to enforce contracts and honest representation of offerings. Without these structures, competition becomes destructive. Within them it can be supremely creative.
We have a tested model for a structure that could embrace all of the disparate efforts -- the IETF or Internet Engineering Task Force. The IETF has no official membership, only participants, and it does not adopt proposals by voting. Instead, working groups generate proposals, and the proposal (aka "RFC") is considered to be adopted when there is "rough consensus", meaning mostly everyone agrees, and more than one working implementation of the proposal is available.
The IETF has grown quite large, and of necessity has acquired more structure than it started out with, surely more than we need at this point. It makes an excellent model however.
This is therefore a proposal that we the developers and implementors declare a distributed authentication and data sharing engineering task force, with the purpose of harmonizing all of the efforts underway to whatever extent can be achieved, and to publish consensus standards for the purpose of enabling interoperation.
Furthermore, that we adopt the open participation, open documents and proceedings, intellectual property rights rules, and the RFC process of the IETF as our starting point.
The IIW2005 conference in Berkeley on October 26th and 27th will be a good venue to have an initial exploratory meeting, since many of the interested parties will be present. We will need a note-taker, and a place to publish the results of our first meeting and continue the discussion. It should be clear that this is a meeting for technologists interested in creating voluntary standards for interoperation, and that we will avoid any sort of marketing or competitive activity in this context, instead focusing on where the possible areas of cooperation may be.