**MACE-Dir Call 17-May-2010**

**Attending**
Brendan Bellina, USC (chair)

Etan Weintraub, Johns Hopkins

Keith Hazelton, U. Wisconsin - Madison

Michael Pelikan, The Penn State U.

Scott Cantor, The Ohio State U.

Mark Scheible, NC State U.

Derek Pierce, USF

Michael Wheeler, Pittsburgh State U.

Todd Piket, MN State Colleges and Universities

Randy Smith, USF

David Bantz, U. Alaska

Eric Goodman, UC-Santa Cruz

Nate Klingenstein, Internet2

Steve Olshansky, Internet2 (scribe)

Next call: June 14, 2010 (there will be no call May 31 due to the Memorial Day holiday)

**Carryover Action Items**

[AI] (Keith and Chad) will take a first pass at revving http://middleware.internet2.edu/dir/docs/internet2-mace-dir-ldap-group-membership-200507.html in the wiki, then run it by the group for comment, with the goal of perhaps finalizing it on the next call in 4 weeks.

[A] (All) Volunteers for working on surveys about managing people entries, attributes, and affiliations from non-authoritative sources, contact Keith.

[A] (Keith) will follow up on the REFEDs list conveying the sentiments expressed on the call today about the eduPersonScopedAffiliation usage comparison.

[AI] (Mike) review the LocalDomainPerson survey results and the Shibboleth attribute naming documentation with an eye toward useful attributes to generalize, as a reference for naming guidelines and base attributes to propose.

http://middleware.internet2.edu/dir/localsurvey.html

http://middleware.internet2.edu/dir/docs/internet2-mace-dir-localdomainperson-200505.html

[AI] (RL "Bob") will craft a survey on use of the mail attribute and possible need for additional email attributes. This surfaced again at the recent TF-EMC2 meeting, in the context of a campus IdP serving Grid apps. E.g. what are RPs assuming?

[AI] (Brendan) will poll the mailing list for feedback on the use of name fields, and whether they have had the need to extend eduPerson locally with additional name fields.

[AI] (Brendan) will coordinate with the leaders of the Educause IdM Constituent Group, toward the goal of polling that group along with MACE-Dir for feedback on the use of commercial and open-source IdM products.

**Discussion**

1. In light of recent announcements by Oracle regarding licensing for the Sun Directory Server product, determine what assistance, if any, MACE-Dir can provide for institutions facing this situation.

- What role should MACE-Dir as a neutral party play?

- What form should assistance take if offered? Poll, white paper, etc.

- Identity and assign action items

It was noted that there is an extensive discussion of this on the Educause IdM list...

Exploring migration paths to other alternatives are a topic of great interest to many in higher ed right now. Note the mail to the Educause IdM list from the CampusEAI Consortium that Keith forwarded to the list 17-May, and respond to them if you are interested. Several MACE-Dir members have expressed interest in participating in developing documentation on this.

A number of schools are nearing the end of their license agreements and have been contacted about their current options to renew. Some campuses have asked about running Sun Directory Service (i.e. a free download) without support, and were told this is not an option -- the software MUST be uninstalled if there is no valid license/support agreement in place.

Consensus was that MACE-Dir could produce some useful documentation about potential migration paths to alternatives, but if it goes down this path it ought to do it in cooperation with other related efforts underway within the CampusEAI Consortium and Educause.

It was suggested that revisiting MACE-Dir's guidance about the various directory applications would be a useful contribution, since it hasn't been done in a while...

The questions seem to boil down to:

1. Is it justifiable to stay with Oracle regardless of the cost and terms required to do so?

2. Is this instead a good justification to move to a viable alternative?

It was observed that since MACE-Dir is the maintainer of eduPerson, there is a natural relationship to the technical aspects of this issue (e.g. hosting documentation in the wiki around sharing migration experiences), rather than the financial or legal aspects.

Broadening MACE-Dir's involvement to include IAM products is an alternative, if there is sufficient support among the group to participate.

The 389 Project (formerly Fedora Directory Server) was also mentioned as a viable alternative that some are interested in.

See the wiki page at https://spaces.internet2.edu/display/macedir/Migrations+from+Sun+DS+and-or+Sun+IAM

2. Review of MACE-Dir meeting at the Internet2 Member Meeting in April

Josh Howlett (JANET) presented on MoonShot.

http://www.terena.org/mail-archives/mobility/pdfEKnl2kkFsw.pdf

Michael Pelikan presented on work underway at PennState related to defining orgUnits and a locations repository -- efforts at harmonizing key aspects that can be reflected in a directory.

3. Discussion of eduGAIN, eduPersonAffiliation values

The eduGAIN policy work group, affiliated with TERENA (the Trans-European Research and Education Networking Association, <www.terena.org>) is considering various mechanisms or releasing affiliation values that differ from those specified in the eduPerson specification <http://middleware.internet2.edu/eduperson/>. They have posted an online poll at <http://doodle.com/me2xgh4ctgrypbg7>.