CardSpace - surely another Laurel & Hardy idea from the merchants of bloatware?

It's a common misconception that Information Card technology is proprietary to Microsoft. In the past there there has been some truth to this, and I realize that most people think it remains true. But it isn't. Quite the contrary.

Information Card technology development started approx five years ago at Microsoft, IBM, Higgins, and a few other places. What created the perception that it was a "Microsoft" technology was a series of actions and omissions by Microsoft over the intervening years. Some were intentional, some not. Many had unintended consequences.

From early on Microsoft was focused on shipping a product as soon as possible. Although getting CardSpace to ship in Nov 2006 was a good thing, their lack of progress in other areas had consequences that worked against our common vision of creating a very vibrant ecosystem of interoperable, competing implementations based on open standards.

To some extent getting a 1.0 product out the door so far ahead of when others could ship (mostly for IPR reasons) helped create the perception that indeed this was a Microsoft dominated technology. Even little things, like for a time appropriating the term Information Card in Microsoft documents. Nor did code-naming the product, "InfoCard". Worse, it took the organization a long time to get the IP behind CardSpace released under the Microsoft OSP. Worst of all, it has only been in recent weeks that the last few remaining protocol design documents have been submitted to an SDO--in this case the new OASIS IMI TC.

Of course, Kim, Mike and others always knew that to be successful there had to be open, standard protocols and multiple competing selectors (and other IdP and RP services) running on all platforms and mobile devices. I've always felt that they saw the big picture. And I think it's fair to say that compared to Microsoft's normal modus operandi there has been unprecedented level of openness, collaboration, and good will.

And in the end, to Microsoft's credit, everything did get done. Today there are open source implementations of everything Microsoft has done (and some stuff that Microsoft hasn't yet done!) living in open source projects like Higgins, Novell's Bandit, OpenInfoCard, Pamela and others. The technology has recently gotten its own non-profit foundation (see http://informationcard.net) (ICF). The ICF and its members, with the addition of IBM, have provided most of the funding and resources for the OSIS series of interop events involving card issuing sites, selectors and relying sites (and relying apps). The one at RSA had 53 companies and open source projects collaborating together. The next and fourth one will be at DIDW.

So today, Information Card, InfoCard, I-Card (or whatever you call it) technology is open, free, and not a Microsoft proprietary technology.

-Paul

PS: Ben Laurie's voice is echoing in my head right now. How Information Card implementations work interoperably between Microsoft's Credentica-developed selective disclosure technology and the IBM Zurich Idemix technology has yet to be seen. I'd say there's reason to be hopeful. Fingers crossed.