etf/index.php - www.eclipse.org/proposals - Git at Google

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     <h1>higgins, the trust framework</h1><br>

       <p>This proposal
     is in the Project Proposal Phase (as defined in the
     <a href="/projects/dev_process/" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline; text-underline: single">
     Eclipse Development Process document</a>) and is written to declare the
     intent and scope of a proposed Technology PMC Project called Higgins, the
     Trust Framework Project, or Higgins. (Note that its original name was the
       Eclipse Trust Framework or ETF, so some of the material will still have
       the old name.) In addition, this proposal is written to
     solicit additional participation and inputs from the Eclipse community. You
     are invited to comment on and/or join the project. Please send all feedback
     to the <a href="http://www.eclipse.org/newsportal/thread.php?group=eclipse.technology.etf" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline; text-underline: single">
     http://www.eclipse.org/newsportal/thread.php?group=eclipse.technology.etf</a> newsgroup.</p>


   <h2>Background</h2>


       <p><span style='color:black'> </span>


  The need to improve interoperability, security and privacy in loosely
       coupled architectures, especially those that span organizational
       boundaries has in recent years increased the prominence of identity
       management systems. These systems maintain a real or virtual directory of
       identities, each with profile attributes, roles, access permissions and so
       on. There is often a need to manage more than just point identities
       (i.e. the digital identifiers and profiles of people and systems). Many
       applications need to manage relationships <i>between</i> identitieswhat
       we call the <i>social context</i>. Examples of these applications include
       groupware, virtual directories, social networking and patient centered
       healthcare.
       <p>We use the term <i>context</i> to cover a range of underlying
       implementations from directory systems like LDAP to social networking
       systems like FOAFnet or Friendster. A context can be thought of as a
       distributed container-like object that contains the digital identities of
       multiple people or processes. A context can represent a team, a
       department, an association, a mailing list, a website, a customer group, a
       personal buddy list, or a list of web services.</p>
       <p>The Higgins Trust Framework platform intends to address four challenges: the lack of common
       interfaces to identity/networking systems, the need for interoperability,
       the need to manage multiple contexts, and the need to respond to
       regulatory, public or customer pressure to implement solutions based on
       trusted infrastructure that offers security and privacy.</p>
       <p><b>Lack of common interfaces.</b> The application developer who needs
       to integrate an identity/networking system is forced to learn the
       intricacies of each different system. The lack of a common API means that
       this learning investment is not transferable. This project intends to
       develop a common API/framework, provide sample plug-ins, and
       encourage developers to create provider plug-ins for existing and new
       identity/networking systems. </p>
       <p><b>The need for interoperability. </b>Although there have been and will
       likely continue to be attempts to create a single universal identity
       system, the reality is that well live in a heterogeneous world for a very
       long time. Rather than introduce yet another new identity system, instead
       Higgins introduces a new context abstraction and allows developers to create
       adapters to legacy systems. Systems operating above the abstraction layer
       have to potential to link identities across identity system boundaries.</p>
       <p><b>The need to manage multiple contexts.</b> The existence of common
       identity/networking framework also makes possible new kinds of
       applications. Applications that manage identities, relationships,
       reputation and trust across <i>multiple</i> contexts. Of particular
       interest are applications that work on behalf of a user to manage their
       own profiles, relationships, and reputation across their various personal
       and professional groups, teams, and other organizational affiliations
       while preserving their privacy. These applications could provide users
       with the ability to: discover new groups through shared affinities; find
       new team members based on reputation and background; sort, filter and
       visualize their social networks. Applications could be used by
       organizations to build and manage their networks of networks.</p>
       <p><b>The need for trusted infrastructure. </b> Working in partnership with our development partners and academic research
       groups, this project will create a key part of the open source
       infrastructure required for an open, accountable, socially-searchable web
       while ensuring privacy and personal control over identity information.</p>


   <h2>Description
       (scope and goals)</h2>


      <p>Our goals are to:<p>1.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Create a framework/API  an abstraction layer for
       identity and social networking services</p>
       <p>2.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Create a set of exemplary context provider
       implementations (plug-ins)</p>
       <p>3.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Create an exemplary app that demonstrates how to use the
       extensible
       framework</p>
       <p>4.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Enable developers to leverage Higgins in their applications</p>

           <p><b>(1) Framework/API</b></p>
       <p>The extensible framework will support an API for use by Eclipse plug-ins and
       applications. The API could also be accessible via a web services
       interface. The API will provide:</p>
       <p>1.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
       Initialization of the framework platform </p>
       <p>2.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
       The <i>context</i> interface (implemented by extensions to
       the context provider extension point)</p>
       <p>3.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
       Context management services (e.g. managing the registry of
       context provider plug-ins; resolving a context reference to a network
       location and a context provider implementation plug-in; loading and
       discarding of contexts, etc.)</p>
       <p>The center of the extensible framework design is the plug-able <i>context</i>
       interface. A context is a container of <i>facets</i>. A facet a person or
       process that has been authenticated within its containing context. A facet
       has a <i>profile</i> which is comprised of a set of RDF properties and
       values (e.g. name, address, etc.). A facet also has one or more <i>roles</i>
       within the context. The set of profile properties and the set of roles and
       the access rights for each role are defined by and controlled by the
       context provider implementation. </p>

       <p>Context provider implementations are responsible for:</p>
       <p>1.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
       Authentication of credentials for access</p>
       <p>2.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
       Authentication of each facet within the context</p>
       <p>3.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
       Authorization of access to facet profile data using
       role-based access control lists</p>
       <p>4.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
       Facet search and editing functions</p>
       <p>5.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
       Support for adding tag properties to facets and on the
       links between facets</p>
       <p>6.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
       Replication/distribution of context data to Higgins clients</p>
       <p>7.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
       Synchronization of context data </p>
       <p>8.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
       Persistence and encryption of context data</p>
       <blockquote>
       <p>Note1: Some context providers will provide only a subset of the
       features listed above. </p>
       <p>Note2: The communications protocols and topology (e.g. client/server or
       P2P) are implementation dependent.</p>

       </blockquote>
       <p><b>(2) &nbsp;Exemplary Context plug-ins</b></p>
       <p>Our plan is to create the following exemplary set of context provider
       plug-ins:</p>
       <p>1.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
       A simple Buddy List plug-in. We will create an EMF-based
       Context data model and use EMF, SDO and Eclipse ECF for replication and
       synchronization</p>
       <p>2.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
       A plug-in to an existing enterprise directory server</p>
       <p>3.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
       A plug-in for the Identity Commons (OASIS XRI-based)
       identity system</p>
       <p>4.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
       A plug-in for a WS-Trust/etc. based identity system</p>
       <p>5.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
       A plug-in for the FOAFnet networking system</p>
       <p>6.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
       A plug-in for Microsofts Outlook email client that
       creates a context containing a network of interlinked facets representing
       the users social network</p>

       <p><b>&nbsp;(3) Exemplary Application</b></p>
       <p>The extensible Higgins Trust Framework makes possible new kinds of applications that manage
       the users identity across <i>multiple</i> contexts. We plan on creating
       an RCP demonstration application that can manage contexts from any of the
       above exemplary plug-ins that includes:</p>
       <p>1.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A UI for viewing, editing and linking identities
         in multiple contexts </p>
         <p> 2.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A UI for rating/reputation </p>
         <p>3.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Network visualization: ability to overlay the
         networks of multiple contexts to determine common relationships and
         characteristics</p>
         <p>4.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Social network search functionality</p>

       <p><b>(4) Enable developers to leverage Higgins </b></p>
      <p>Our hope
       is that developers can use Higgins to more easily implement identity- and
       networking-related functionality in their applications, instead of
       creating this functionality from scratch. Here are some examples. They
       could use an existing Higgins context provider to manage the list of
       identities, member records, etc. as well as all associated attribute data
       used by their application. They could use Higgins context abstraction as
       glue to integrate multiple existing enterprise directories.&nbsp; They could
       add peripheral vision of other co-workers members online presence,
       contact information, and reputation to existing apps.


   <h2>Organization</h2>


       <p>We propose this project should be undertaken as a Technology project
         rather than as part of the Eclipse Platform. Being a Technology project
         gives it room to experiment without disruption to other Eclipse Platform
         development work.</p>
 <p>The life cycle of this project may be similar to the Equinox project.  That
   is, once this work matures, it may be incorporated into the Eclipse Platform
   to provide a common open source substrate that industrial/commercial users could
   use to build solutions. Alternatively, it may continue as a technology subproject.
 </p>
       <p><b>Suggested Project Lead and Committers</b></p>
       <p>This section captures the list of organizations that have expressed interest
   in the project and/or its components, and as such will be updated periodically
   to reflect the growing interest in this project.<br>
   <br>
   Rather than canvas the Eclipse community at large, the submitters of this proposal
   welcome interested parties to post to the <a
 href="http://www.eclipse.org/newsportal/thread.php?group=eclipse.technology.etf">eclipse.technology.etf newsgroup</a>
   and ask to be added to the list as interested parties or to suggest changes
   to this document.</p>
       <b>Initial Set of Committers </b>
       <p>Paul Trevithick
   (Project Lead)<br>
   SocialPhysics.org; paul at SocialPhysics.org</p>
       <p>Dmitry Bakuntsev <br>
       International Technology Group (ITG)</p>
       <p>John Beatty</p>
       <p>Andy Dale <br>
       ooTao</p>
       <p>Ken Gilmer</p>
       <p>Scott Lewis <br>
         Composent, Inc.</p>
       <p>Peter Nehrer <br>
   S1 Corporation</p>
       <p>Mary Ruddy<br>
   SocialPhysics.org; mary at SocialPhysics.org</p>
       <p>Paul Weitz</p>


     <strong>Interested Parties</strong>
     &nbsp;


     SocialPhysics.org
     <a href="http://www.socialphysics.org/">http://www.socialphysics.org</a>


     IBM&nbsp;
      <a href="http://www.ibm.com/">http://www.ibm.com/</a>


     Inpriva&nbsp;
      <a href="http://www.inpriva.com/">http://www.inpriva.com/</a>


     ITG&nbsp;
      <a href="http://www.intertechnogroup.com/">http://www.intertechnogroup.com/</a>


     ooTao&nbsp;
      <a href="http://www.ootao.com/">http://www.ootao.com/</a>


     Berkman Center for Internet &amp; Society at
       Harvard Law
      <a href="http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/">http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/</a>


 </div>
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	<?php
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	generate_header("Higgins, The Trust Framework");
	?>


	<h1>higgins, the trust framework</h1><br>

	<p>This proposal
	is in the Project Proposal Phase (as defined in the
	<a href="/projects/dev_process/" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline; text-underline: single">
	Eclipse Development Process document</a>) and is written to declare the
	intent and scope of a proposed Technology PMC Project called Higgins, the
	Trust Framework Project, or Higgins. (Note that its original name was the
	Eclipse Trust Framework or ETF, so some of the material will still have
	the old name.) In addition, this proposal is written to
	solicit additional participation and inputs from the Eclipse community. You
	are invited to comment on and/or join the project. Please send all feedback
	to the <a href="http://www.eclipse.org/newsportal/thread.php?group=eclipse.technology.etf" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline; text-underline: single">
	http://www.eclipse.org/newsportal/thread.php?group=eclipse.technology.etf</a> newsgroup.</p>



	<h2>Background</h2>


	<p><span style='color:black'> </span>


	The need to improve interoperability, security and privacy in loosely
	coupled architectures, especially those that span organizational
	boundaries has in recent years increased the prominence of identity
	management systems. These systems maintain a real or virtual directory of
	identities, each with profile attributes, roles, access permissions and so
	on. There is often a need to manage more than just point identities
	(i.e. the digital identifiers and profiles of people and systems). Many
	applications need to manage relationships <i>between</i> identitieswhat
	we call the <i>social context</i>. Examples of these applications include
	groupware, virtual directories, social networking and patient centered
	healthcare.
	<p>We use the term <i>context</i> to cover a range of underlying
	implementations from directory systems like LDAP to social networking
	systems like FOAFnet or Friendster. A context can be thought of as a
	distributed container-like object that contains the digital identities of
	multiple people or processes. A context can represent a team, a
	department, an association, a mailing list, a website, a customer group, a
	personal buddy list, or a list of web services.</p>
	<p>The Higgins Trust Framework platform intends to address four challenges: the lack of common
	interfaces to identity/networking systems, the need for interoperability,
	the need to manage multiple contexts, and the need to respond to
	regulatory, public or customer pressure to implement solutions based on
	trusted infrastructure that offers security and privacy.</p>
	<p><b>Lack of common interfaces.</b> The application developer who needs
	to integrate an identity/networking system is forced to learn the
	intricacies of each different system. The lack of a common API means that
	this learning investment is not transferable. This project intends to
	develop a common API/framework, provide sample plug-ins, and
	encourage developers to create provider plug-ins for existing and new
	identity/networking systems. </p>
	<p><b>The need for interoperability. </b>Although there have been and will
	likely continue to be attempts to create a single universal identity
	system, the reality is that well live in a heterogeneous world for a very
	long time. Rather than introduce yet another new identity system, instead
	Higgins introduces a new context abstraction and allows developers to create
	adapters to legacy systems. Systems operating above the abstraction layer
	have to potential to link identities across identity system boundaries.</p>
	<p><b>The need to manage multiple contexts.</b> The existence of common
	identity/networking framework also makes possible new kinds of
	applications. Applications that manage identities, relationships,
	reputation and trust across <i>multiple</i> contexts. Of particular
	interest are applications that work on behalf of a user to manage their
	own profiles, relationships, and reputation across their various personal
	and professional groups, teams, and other organizational affiliations
	while preserving their privacy. These applications could provide users
	with the ability to: discover new groups through shared affinities; find
	new team members based on reputation and background; sort, filter and
	visualize their social networks. Applications could be used by
	organizations to build and manage their networks of networks.</p>
	<p><b>The need for trusted infrastructure. </b> Working in partnership with our development partners and academic research
	groups, this project will create a key part of the open source
	infrastructure required for an open, accountable, socially-searchable web
	while ensuring privacy and personal control over identity information.</p>





	<h2>Description
	(scope and goals)</h2>


	<p>Our goals are to:<p>1.    Create a framework/API an abstraction layer for
	identity and social networking services</p>
	<p>2.    Create a set of exemplary context provider
	implementations (plug-ins)</p>
	<p>3.    Create an exemplary app that demonstrates how to use the
	extensible
	framework</p>
	<p>4.    Enable developers to leverage Higgins in their applications</p>

	<p><b>(1) Framework/API</b></p>
	<p>The extensible framework will support an API for use by Eclipse plug-ins and
	applications. The API could also be accessible via a web services
	interface. The API will provide:</p>
	<p>1.
	Initialization of the framework platform </p>
	<p>2.
	The <i>context</i> interface (implemented by extensions to
	the context provider extension point)</p>
	<p>3.
	Context management services (e.g. managing the registry of
	context provider plug-ins; resolving a context reference to a network
	location and a context provider implementation plug-in; loading and
	discarding of contexts, etc.)</p>
	<p>The center of the extensible framework design is the plug-able <i>context</i>
	interface. A context is a container of <i>facets</i>. A facet a person or
	process that has been authenticated within its containing context. A facet
	has a <i>profile</i> which is comprised of a set of RDF properties and
	values (e.g. name, address, etc.). A facet also has one or more <i>roles</i>
	within the context. The set of profile properties and the set of roles and
	the access rights for each role are defined by and controlled by the
	context provider implementation. </p>

	<p>Context provider implementations are responsible for:</p>
	<p>1.
	Authentication of credentials for access</p>
	<p>2.
	Authentication of each facet within the context</p>
	<p>3.
	Authorization of access to facet profile data using
	role-based access control lists</p>
	<p>4.
	Facet search and editing functions</p>
	<p>5.
	Support for adding tag properties to facets and on the
	links between facets</p>
	<p>6.
	Replication/distribution of context data to Higgins clients</p>
	<p>7.
	Synchronization of context data </p>
	<p>8.
	Persistence and encryption of context data</p>
	<blockquote>
	<p>Note1: Some context providers will provide only a subset of the
	features listed above. </p>
	<p>Note2: The communications protocols and topology (e.g. client/server or
	P2P) are implementation dependent.</p>

	</blockquote>
	<p><b>(2)  Exemplary Context plug-ins</b></p>
	<p>Our plan is to create the following exemplary set of context provider
	plug-ins:</p>
	<p>1.
	A simple Buddy List plug-in. We will create an EMF-based
	Context data model and use EMF, SDO and Eclipse ECF for replication and
	synchronization</p>
	<p>2.
	A plug-in to an existing enterprise directory server</p>
	<p>3.
	A plug-in for the Identity Commons (OASIS XRI-based)
	identity system</p>
	<p>4.
	A plug-in for a WS-Trust/etc. based identity system</p>
	<p>5.
	A plug-in for the FOAFnet networking system</p>
	<p>6.
	A plug-in for Microsofts Outlook email client that
	creates a context containing a network of interlinked facets representing
	the users social network</p>

	<p><b> (3) Exemplary Application</b></p>
	<p>The extensible Higgins Trust Framework makes possible new kinds of applications that manage
	the users identity across <i>multiple</i> contexts. We plan on creating
	an RCP demonstration application that can manage contexts from any of the
	above exemplary plug-ins that includes:</p>
	<p>1.    A UI for viewing, editing and linking identities
	in multiple contexts </p>
	<p> 2.    A UI for rating/reputation </p>
	<p>3.    Network visualization: ability to overlay the
	networks of multiple contexts to determine common relationships and
	characteristics</p>
	<p>4.    Social network search functionality</p>

	<p><b>(4) Enable developers to leverage Higgins </b></p>
	<p>Our hope
	is that developers can use Higgins to more easily implement identity- and
	networking-related functionality in their applications, instead of
	creating this functionality from scratch. Here are some examples. They
	could use an existing Higgins context provider to manage the list of
	identities, member records, etc. as well as all associated attribute data
	used by their application. They could use Higgins context abstraction as
	glue to integrate multiple existing enterprise directories.  They could
	add peripheral vision of other co-workers members online presence,
	contact information, and reputation to existing apps.





	<h2>Organization</h2>


	<p>We propose this project should be undertaken as a Technology project
	rather than as part of the Eclipse Platform. Being a Technology project
	gives it room to experiment without disruption to other Eclipse Platform
	development work.</p>
	<p>The life cycle of this project may be similar to the Equinox project. That
	is, once this work matures, it may be incorporated into the Eclipse Platform
	to provide a common open source substrate that industrial/commercial users could
	use to build solutions. Alternatively, it may continue as a technology subproject.
	</p>
	<p><b>Suggested Project Lead and Committers</b></p>
	<p>This section captures the list of organizations that have expressed interest
	in the project and/or its components, and as such will be updated periodically
	to reflect the growing interest in this project.<br>
	<br>
	Rather than canvas the Eclipse community at large, the submitters of this proposal
	welcome interested parties to post to the <a
	href="http://www.eclipse.org/newsportal/thread.php?group=eclipse.technology.etf">eclipse.technology.etf newsgroup</a>
	and ask to be added to the list as interested parties or to suggest changes
	to this document.</p>
	<b>Initial Set of Committers </b>
	<p>Paul Trevithick
	(Project Lead)<br>
	SocialPhysics.org; paul at SocialPhysics.org</p>
	<p>Dmitry Bakuntsev <br>
	International Technology Group (ITG)</p>
	<p>John Beatty</p>
	<p>Andy Dale <br>
	ooTao</p>
	<p>Ken Gilmer</p>
	<p>Scott Lewis <br>
	Composent, Inc.</p>
	<p>Peter Nehrer <br>
	S1 Corporation</p>
	<p>Mary Ruddy<br>
	SocialPhysics.org; mary at SocialPhysics.org</p>
	<p>Paul Weitz</p>





	<strong>Interested Parties</strong>







	SocialPhysics.org
	<a href="http://www.socialphysics.org/">http://www.socialphysics.org</a>



	IBM
	<a href="http://www.ibm.com/">http://www.ibm.com/</a>



	Inpriva
	<a href="http://www.inpriva.com/">http://www.inpriva.com/</a>



	ITG
	<a href="http://www.intertechnogroup.com/">http://www.intertechnogroup.com/</a>


	ooTao
	<a href="http://www.ootao.com/">http://www.ootao.com/</a>


	Berkman Center for Internet & Society at
	Harvard Law
	<a href="http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/">http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/</a>


	</div>
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