*MACE Conference Call*
October 18, 2004

*Attendees*

Bob Morgan (chair) - Washington
Neal McBurnett - Internet2
Steve Carmody - Brown
Brian Gilmore - Edinburgh
Michael Gettes - Duke
Paul Hill - MIT
Ton Verschuren - SURFnet
Keith Hazelton - Wisconsin
Mark Poepping - CMU
Scott Cantor - OSU
Ken Klingenstein - Colorado/Internet2
David Wasley - UCOP
Ben Chinowsky (scribe) - Internet2

*Discussion*

Ton gave an overview of the recent federations meeting in Slaughter, UK. Australia, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, the UK and the US were all represented. There was a general sense that now is the time to begin a concerted effort to make sure federations get done right. The Slaughter group agreed to:
1) create a guidelines document for national-level federations, which will hopefully evolve into a cookbook over time. There is a consensus that this document should be technology-neutral, as vs. recommending that national federations use Shibboleth.
2) hire someone to travel to the various countries involved and look into what's needed to establish trust between federations internationally. This person would focus primarily on the policy rather than the technical issues; Ken noted that there seems to be consensus on using Shibboleth internationally. [AI] All will send Ken suggestions on who to hire for the super-federation planner position.
Formal minutes of the Slaughter meeting are in the works. [AI] Ken will send his rough notes from Slaughter to the MACE list.

MACE discussed issues around the December 1-3 Open Source Summit (http://www.opensourcesummit.org/); the O.K.I. and Sakai efforts are expected to be prominent at this meeting. The group discussed some of its concerns with O.K.I. and Sakai: the need to export authZ (a la Signet), the need to reconcile license structures, the need for consistent architectures (especially inter-realm), and the need for support. [AI] Ken will circulate a list of O.K.I. and Sakai issues, and suggestions for addressing them, for discussion on the MACE list.

Bob noted that a milestone has been reached in the E-Authentication work: last week interoperability was demonstrated between a Shibboleth ID provider and an Oblix service provider conforming to the E-Authentication profile. Bob described this as "a pretty big deal" and offered kudos to Walter Hoehn for making it happen. The current timeline aims to have E-Authentication support in Shibboleth shipping by next March.

The group briefly discussed potential new MACE members. [AI] All will continue sending Bob their nominations for new MACE members.

Finally, Ken noted that major media companies are interested in having higher education lead a renewed DRM effort. Their principal concern is preventing widespread copyright violation through sharing of movies on Internet2 networks. There was general agreement that we should go forward with planning for joint DRM work; the hope is that Internet2's help in addressing abuse of copyright on its networks will provide opportunities to get the media companies to implement functionality that addresses higher education's own DRM priorities.

*Action Items*

[AI] All will send Ken suggestions on who to hire for the super-federation planner position coming out of the Slaughter meeting.
[AI] Ken will send his rough notes from Slaughter to the MACE list.
[AI] Ken will circulate a list of O.K.I. and Sakai issues, and suggestions for addressing them, for discussion on the MACE list.
[AI] All will continue sending Bob their nominations for new MACE members.