Skip to main content

Notice: this Wiki will be going read only early in 2024 and edits will no longer be possible. Please see: https://gitlab.eclipse.org/eclipsefdn/helpdesk/-/wikis/Wiki-shutdown-plan for the plan.

Jump to: navigation, search

Draft Response to Open Specification Promise

Revision as of 10:13, 21 September 2006 by Mary.socialphysics.org (Talk | contribs)

(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)

We have been working on a draft response to Microsoft's historic Open specification Promise. When we are finished revising this document, we will make it available to Microsoft.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>..

OSIS and the Higgins team were very pleased to see the announcement of Microsoft’s Open Specification Promise (http://www.microsoft.com/interop/osp/) at DIDW.


We appreciate the great amount of effort this took on Microsoft’s part and are very appreciative of Kim Cameron’s and Mike Jones’ work. We also want to thank Pete Rowley of Red Hat and Dale Olds of Novell and the other companies that worked with Microsoft to accomplish this historic agreement.


The Open Specification Promise represents a major step forward and has generated much good will for Microsoft.


We are confident that implementations based on Higgins components will be able to interoperate on UNIX and OSX with CardSpace™-compliant STSes as well as provide functional equivalence to CardSpace™ on these platforms.


With respect to this effort, the Higgins project intends to:

  • Duplicate the CardSpace UI
  • Import/export cards to/from the CardSpace file format
  • Use the CardSpace schema
  • Use the WS-* protocols and profiles as they are used in CardSpace implementation(s)


Microsoft has published documents that will help us. We intend to use the information and intellectual property embodied in a number of publicly available documents such as:

  • A Tech Reference for InfoCard in Windows.
  • A Guide to Integrating with InfoCard
  • A Guide to Supporting InfoCard within Web Applications and Browsers
  • Windows CardSpace Reference in the Windows SDK
  • Windows Communication Foundation and CardSpace (MSDN library)
  • MSDN.microsoft.com/winfx/reference/infocard/default.aspx
  • Articles in MSDN magazine related to CardSpace


We intend to practice all inventions and patents required to implement our system. We will be creating derivative works from what is described above. Code and documentation developed in the Higgins project will be licensed under the open source "Eclipse Public License" (EPL).


We need an agreement to indemnify any practitioner involved in doing what is described above. The Open Specification Promise that Microsoft announced on September 12 provides a significant piece of this indemnification.


In order to accomplish our joint objectives, we also require


  • The addition of the InfoCard specifications, including schema and the visual components for the card selector UI and any other bits of specifications (a.k.a. speclits) that are required
  • Clarification of the "patents that are necessary to implement only the required portions of the Covered Specification" terminology. Does this mean those claims required in the specifications? What about optional, etc. portions of the specs? Or does this mean the indemnification only covers those portions of the specification required by the application (i.e. those exercised?)

Back to the top