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Passport for Linux On the Way
mrsam writes "PCWorld reports that
Microsoft comissioned
Ready-to-Run Software,
a small software vendor,
to port the Passport server software
to Solaris, Red Hat Linux, AIX, and HPUX. Oh, joy."
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what will be surprising is that once the fist iteration is shipped Microsoft keeps the updates flowing - Frontpage extensions for Apache on Unix anyone?
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
It allready exists, also from Ready-to-Run: http://www.rtr.com/fpsupport/ - note that Digital Unix, FreeBSD, BSDI, Linux (RedHat), Solaris, HPUX and IRIX are supported.
"Ready-to-Run" is a misnomer. I had to deal with the unix FrontRage extensions at my previous company (a web hosting provider), and Ready-to-Run's software was total dreck.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentes...
Sorry for nagging, but I have to correct you here. It was the greek who built the Trojan horse...
For the uninformed:
Liberty Alliance Project. Sun, Novell, RSA, HP, IBM... the list goes on and on.
It's attempting to do exactly what passport does (which you may or may not like). The specs are available, and Sun have released an opensource Identity Server.
I dunno. If you need a server to tell you your identity...
Slashdot looked deep within my soul and assigned
me a number based on the order in which I joined
The passport client is a web browser. Works great in any mozila powered browser on any operating system, including Windows, Linux, AIX or whatever.
"XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, use more." - Anonymous Coward
The fact that Passpoer is being ported to linux means nothing, really. For a system to exist people have ot use it. The base of linux users who actually register for passport (especially those who use linux because it isn't MS) will be very small.
I didn't see anything in the article about the Passport client being ported. MS is only porting the Passport server because people have asked them to.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
Second point, so what? Passport has practically zero penetration, even less since the screwed over doristheflorist.com and removed the Wallet functionality (for being unnecessary bloat). Now don't me wrong, I'm sure MS will push Passport until it gets bigger and better, but at the moment that isn't an issue.
Final point, digital identity is a good idea, and the world will be an easier and more secure place for those who want it to be when we can have digital identities. So, what are we doing about it?
The PingID project is developing an open royalty free set of protocols, with an open source (though unfortunately non-free) reference implementation of the server. This will be something you can download and install onto your server for free, that will then let you sign in to various accounts that support the protocols, manage your personal document store and any authorizations you have given out (at least, in the beginning). The url is pingid.org but I'm not linking to it, because we're going to be putting up a new site that more accurately reflects the new open source nature of the project in like 3 or 4 days, so I don't want people to go look and go "huh, he was talking out of his ass". Code for v0.1 will be coming in a few weeks hopefully, I get paid to hack on it part time. Join the mailing lists to help out and track its progress. So far, this is really the only open answer to digital identity we've found, so I'm pretty glad I'm a part of it :)
[grin] I know it was joke, but just for future reference quite a few parts of Wine are now being developed on Windows, at it makes it easier to locate bugs. In theory, as they are recreating the DLLs, you can in fact drop in parts of the Wine project DLLs into Windows and have a semi-MS free Windows installation. Scary huh? :)
Interesting you should mention that. Apparently Passport does indeed now have a Kerberos stack (I had previously thought that would be too hard to do), and the XBox service uses it. They are cross tying their products already.