Re: Higgins

Tks Markus... this is really helpful to hear the backstory.

p.


On Sat, Jun 13, 2015 at 6:13 AM, Markus Sabadello <markus@projectdanube.org>
wrote:

> Hey Adrian,
>
> I was one of the main contributors on Higgins for several years.
> It was definitely similar to this group's work, since it was also about
> gathering and then sharing credentials.
> Credentials in Higgins were modeled as "cards", and there were
> "self-issued" and "managed" cards.
> Cards could be obtained and submitted to websites using client-side
> "selector" software (browser plugins).
> Those cards and credentials were limited to a key/value structure and
> could not contain arbitrary RDF data.
>
> On the surface, Higgins was basically an open-source alternative to
> Microsoft CardSpace and its InfoCards.
>
> But its real innovation was the underlying data model that you just
> pointed to, based on RDF and OWL.
> We had the concept of an abstract global graph of data, with data coming
> from various different local and remote sources ("contexts").
> We had a collection of "context providers", i.e. libraries that could
> access and map the various data sources, e.g. LDAP, Facebook, etc.
> We also had a way to point at specific properties of specific resources
> in a specific context with just a single identifier.
> So e.g. to point to the e-mail attribute of my Facebook account, I would
> only need a single global ID string, rather than a URI for my resource
> and then a URI for a property, and maybe another URI for a named graph.
>
> And so on, there were more cool ideas, such as an early form of access
> control for RDF graphs.
> There were some high-profile PoCs, e.g. companies like Equifax issuing
> cards with Higgins software.
> Novell, IBM, Google, etc. were involved, we also worked with Idemix and
> U-Prove, SAML2, OpenID, etc. early on.
>
> You ask why didn't it go any further. Not sure. The main company
> (Parity, later Azigo) ran out of money.
> And users simply didn't want to install and use the card selector
> software, I guess that's the reason.
>
> Here is a presentation I gave about Higgins in 2008 if you're interested!
> http://www.slideshare.net/peacekeeper/higgins-ese-presentation
>
> all the best,
> Markus
>
> Am 6/4/2015 um 11:25 AM schrieb Adrian Hope-Bailie:
> > I wonder if anyone knows anything about the Higgins project:
> > http://www.eclipse.org/higgins/
> >
> > It seems to have faded to nill many years ago despite having some
> > promise and some high profile organisations as participants.
> >
> > I found their data model particularly interesting:
> > http://wiki.eclipse.org/Persona_Data_Model_2.0
> >
> > Adrian
>
>
>