Drummmon Reed, CTO of OneName Corp, talked about the XNS protocol his company has pioneered and is trying to get adopted broadly. XNS allows identity information to be expressed in XML documents and be linked, creating (as one of their papers says) “an Identity Web that can do for digital identities what the World Wide Web has done for content.” Drummon said that this identity web will be capable of modeling the rich and complex interactions among identities via “contracts” based on an extensible set of attributes that includes permissions, purpose, policies on privacy and security, and signature.

Drummon listed the advantages of the system, including: global addressing and logical naming; access control and auditing; permission management; data sharing and versioning; persistent links; and workflow.

Sounds great, but I’m confused: Do we get these benefits because XNS is so extensible that it can handle the data usually handled by, say, a workflow system, or is it that a workflow system could use the identity services provided by XNS? Or both? If I came in knowing more, this would not be a question…

In speaking with other attendees, the main challenge facing XNS seems to be getting enough “traction” in the market since it requires large scale adoption to fulfill its promise. But I’m merely relying on the kindness of strangers when I say this.

(Frank Paynter knows about this stuff and he’s excited about XNS.)

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Categories: Uncategorized dw