Bridging the gap between Liberty and Microsoft
David Berlind,
ZDNet,
Jul 16, 2002
OLDaily readers will recall that the Liberty Alliance is an initiative started by Sun and other companies in order to establish a standard for personal identity on the net. As the title of this article suggests, it is widely perceived to be in conflict with Microsoft's Passport (and there has been some buzz in the trades about deals between Microsoft and various credit card vendors). The tenor of this article is that there is not as wide a gap as is typically perceived and that if enough people adopt the Liberty standard, Microsoft will fall into line. After all, the Liberty standard, unlike Passport, is an open standard: Microsoft could use the standard without joining the alliance. Like the author, I am of the view that what we will see will be a network of rights brokers. A user will choose one agent or another, and that agent will act as a broker for various transactions with external agencies, acting as a standards translation service where necessary.
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