What is the relationship between the OASIS XRI/XDI specifications and the Liberty Alliance specifications?
The two sets of specifications address complementary but different problems. The Liberty Alliance specifications cover standards for federated identity – identity which can recognized across different companies or websites. The Liberty Alliance specifications enjoy very broad support across the industry. The best-known Liberty application is “single sign-on” or SSO – the ability to log in once to a website, then be able to navigate to any other website in its “circle of trust” without having to log in again. However the Liberty Alliance specs are based on existing identifiers being issued by companies or websites, such as usernames or email addresses. They do not address the issue of federated identifiers – identifiers that are designed to be used across multiple companies or websites. The OASIS XRI specifications complement the Liberty Alliance specifications by providing an open standard for abstract, domain-independent identifiers (i-names and i-numbers). The principle advantage of
