MACE Conference Call, July 30, 2001

*MACE Conference Call*
July 30, 2001

*Attendees*

Bob Morgan (chair) - Washington
Von Welch - Globus
Ken Klingenstein - Colorado/Internet2
Renee Frost - Michigan/Internet2
Ellen Vaughan - Internet2
Michael Gettes - Georgetown
Steven Carmody - Brown
Ben Chinowsky (scribe) - Internet2

*Discussion*

Bob opened the meeting with a report from the July 23-25 Burton Group Catalyst conference. Catalyst was dominated by big vendors of big software, with the notable exception of one presentation by open-source advocate Dave Winer. Winer accused the vendors of pushing crummy software and trying to lock their customers into proprietary ways of doing things; Bob suspects that "many went away with their suspicions confirmed about these wild-haired open-source communists". Passport was much discussed; Microsoft described it as Kerberos-based, and several people put forward reasons, like poor scalability, why they think Kerberos won't work in this context. "Putting i Before e" -- infrastructure before ebusiness -- was the official buzzphrase of the conference. Bob observed that identity management is now clearly being seen as a "big-company competitive space"; at the same time, identity management has caught the attention of open-source leaders, and some open-source identity management projects are coming together as well.

Steven gave a report from the July 10-11 OMG Software Services Grid Workshop (http://www.roguewave.com/groups/CTO/workshop/). He described OMG as a "parallel universe"; they are vendor-driven and have little knowledge of what's happening in the IETF. OMG is much bigger than just CORBA. [AI] Steven will send out slides on PIDS, an identity standard being promulgated by OMG. An XML standard for human resources (HRXML) is also in the works; the idea is to make it possible for information about people to move around easily among different types of enterprises. Steven presented MACE's work and came away with a clear sense that OMG is primarily concerned with higher-level middleware, mostly dealing with interactions among big applications. This fits well with the needs of medical middleware, and Internet2 Health Sciences Initiative lead Mary Kratz found much of interest at the workshop. [AI] Ken will ask Mary Kratz how she would like MACE to participate in the Internet2 Health Sciences Initiative. Otherwise, there appears to be no clear path to MACE involvement in OMG work. There was some interest in Bob's suggestion that MACE designate an official go-between for this area; there was general agreement that MACE needs to better understand how OMG's work relates to its own, especially given NSF's interest in furthering a comprehensive middleware architecture.

The group briefly discussed two outstanding action items:

[4-June-01 - Ken will organize a conference call with Von and people working on Grid PKI.]
Some recent progress has been made on Grid PKI; [AI] Von will give an update on Grid PKI on the August 2 or August 16 HEPKI-PAG call; Ken will send Von the PAG schedule and call-in information.

[4-June-01 - Ken will ask Von Welch and Steve Tuecke if they want to participate in the PKI Labs research conference.]
Still to do. Ken noted that NIH has provided some additional funding for the PKI Labs conference, and Von noted that there are others working on Grid PKI who may be interested as well.

Bob encouraged the group to revisit the list of action items; in particular, he noted that MACE is still seeking nominations for new members. [AI] Ken will ask MACE's prospective European participants if they object to the MACE calls being scheduled for a time that's in the evening in their part of the world.

The call closed with a short discussion of the Dmitri Sklyarov case. Bob is deeply concerned about about the DMCA; he described Sklyarov as having been jailed for "exposing the weak crypto in a commercial product". Bob also expressed the opinion that "the issues are only becoming more clear and more urgent", and there was general agreement.

*Action Items*

[AI] 30-July-2001 - Steven will send out slides on PIDS, an identity standard being promulgated by OMG.
[AI] 30-July-2001 - Ken will ask Mary Kratz how she would like MACE to participate in the Internet2 Health Sciences Initiative.
[AI] 30-July-2001 - Von will give an update on Grid PKI on the August 2 or August 16 HEPKI-PAG call; Ken will send Von the PAG schedule and call-in information.
[AI] 30-July-2001 - Ken will ask MACE's prospective European participants if they object to the MACE calls being scheduled for a time that's in the evening in their part of the world.
[AI] 16-July-2001 - Judith will be asked for a copy of ListProc's operational specs for informational purposes.
[AI] 16-July-2001 - Ken will schedule BoFs at various meetings about participation agreements for inter-realm applications.
[AI] 16-July-2001 - All will send Bob URLs for authorization projects currently taking place on campuses.
[AI] 2-July-2001 - Ken will try for two more days to contact Todd Needham about the possibility of Microsoft's involvement in the Internet2/Grid MWIR integration proposal; if no luck, he'll try Dave Ladd.
[AI] 2-July-2001 - Ken will draft a half-page agreement for Michael to ask DoDHE participants to sign.
[AI] 18-June-01 - MACE will continue its discussion of issues around expanding its membership, then vote on who to ask to join; if those selected are not interested, further votes will be taken as necessary.
[AI] 18-June-01 - Keith will forward Ryan Muldoon's material on OIDs to Ben, for incorporation into http://middleware.internet2.edu/docs/a-brief-guide-to-OIDs.doc.
[AI] 18-June-01 - Ben will post a revised version of http://middleware.internet2.edu/docs/a-brief-guide-to-OIDs.doc.
[AI] 18-June-01 - Steven will talk to Mike LaHaye about the possibility of Internet2 deploying an LDAP-enabled list server.
[AI] 4-June-01 - Bob, Keith, and Ken will decide who to invite to form a MACE-Dir advisory board; Ken will draft the invitation and Keith will send it out.
[AI] 4-June-01 - Ken will ask Von Welch and Steve Tuecke if they want to participate in the PKI Labs research conference.
[AI] 4-June-01 - Jim will investigate the possibility of using a project at Virginia for the multi-campus workgroup case in the October 1 Shibboleth demo.
[AI] 4-June-01 - Keith will investigate the possibility of using a project at Wisconsin for the multi-campus workgroup case in the October 1 Shibboleth demo.
[AI] 4-June-01 - Bob will send the list proposed changes to the middleware document standards.