What is OpenLiberty.org?

OpenLiberty.org, a domain name donated by HP, has been launched with the aid of the Liberty Alliance as a resource for all those looking to deploy open source solutions for securing identity-based Web services at the relying party. This site is both an information portal for many open source efforts in the identity management space and a developer community building openLiberty-ClientLib, an open source library for deploying a Liberty Web Services Consumer.

Why is this needed?

The Identity Web Services Framework (ID-WSF) is a set of open specifications for interoperable, secure, idenity-enabled Web services. Others of us are looking for open source libraries so we can build some pilots internally or some consumer-facing web service applications on our own. And some of us who have already deployed ID-WSF infrastructure (most likely using one of these certified products) are looking for open source solutions for our partners to quickly and easily deploy relying parties that participated in our federations. The openLiberty-ClientLib libraries will do all that and they will be compliant and interoperable with ID-WSF 2.0 (the only standards available for deploying secure, interoperable identity-enabled Web services).

What will be openLiberty’s initial focus?

The participants are initially focusing on ways to provide the open source community with ID-WSF Web Services Consumer (WSC) libraries so that developers can incorporate SAML 2.0 functionality into a variety of Web services and client-based applications. For more details check the Roadmap.

Why is openLiberty focusing initially on libraries for WSC in a SAML 2.0 context?

SAML 2.0 is the leading standard for federated identity and is now widely adopted. Liberty Federation (SAML 2.0 + Liberty Alliance policy best practices) is a key enabler for securing Web services across domains, protecting user privacy and enabling appropriate user control over the use of identity information. While SAML alone can secure access to Web-based applications, the client technologies of ID-WSF are required to allow applications to invoke services across the network. By focusing initially on WSC Libraries that take advantage of SAML 2.0, we will have new tools for building more functional, secure and privacy respecting Web services, especially at the relying party.

What resources are available at openLiberty.org?

We are using sourceforge for source management and bug tracking. We have a forum for general discussion and Q&A. We have a developers list for those folks interested in the actual design and implementation of openLiberty-ClientLib. We have a blog you can subscribe to and stay informed of our progress as well as announcements from related projects. We have wiki for collabortive development of our roadmap and general information sharing. We recommend you take a look at the Site Map and spend some time poking around.

What is the licensing model?

openLiberty software is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license.

What is the connect between Liberty Alliance and openLiberty?

The effort was launched under the leadership of Jason Rouault of HP with the assistance of more than 40 Liberty members participating in the discussions. Some of the lead contributors to the planning were from AOL, Entr’ouvert, HP, Intel, Internet2, Neustar, Nokia, Novell, Sun Microsystems, Symlabs, and NTT. This team started out by looking around at the various open source projects that were implementing ID-WSF or SAML 2.0. They concluded that no other project was specifically focused on ID-WSF 2.0 WSC libraries in Java, .Net, and LAMP (yet these were recognized as being requirements in the market today). Therefore they helped Liberty Alliance bootstrap this project. Liberty Alliance maintains an arms-length relationship with openLiberty which is self-governed.

What organizations are implementing and/or deploying Liberty Web Services?

Deployers of Liberty Web Services include American Express, AOL, France Telecom, Nokia, and Vodafone as well as government organizations in Finland, France and Norway. Since 2003, nearly 80 products from vendors around the world have passed Liberty interoperability(tm) testing including products from Gemalto, Epok, HP, Sun Microsystems, Novell, Nokia, NTT and Symlabs that have passed testing for Liberty Web Services interoperability.

Will applications built with tools available at openLiberty interoperate with other Liberty Alliance deployments?

Yes, the open source tools available at openLiberty.org will allow developers to leverage the security and privacy features of Liberty Web Services to develop applications that can interoperate with Liberty-based deployments worldwide. Liberty Web Services allow SAML 2.0 assertions to be used as security tokens, incorporates WS-Addressing to enable asynchronous messaging capabilities, features subscription and notification capabilities, and supports identity tokens to provide a structured mechanism to refer to a user inside the network. These are some of the ID-WSF capabilities developers will be able to leverage when building interoperable Web services based on tools available at openLiberty.org. Additionally, we fully expect the code developed at openLiberty to participate in the Liberty Alliance interoperability testing program.

Will Liberty Alliance be releasing open source code?

No, the Liberty Alliance does not develop code. Code will be developed and released by the openLiberty open source community. This community will include some members from the Liberty Alliance, but membership in the Liberty Alliance is not required to participate in openLiberty.

How does the formation of openLiberty fit in with other open source projects?

There are many open source projects around network identity management and many of these are implementing Liberty or SAML specifications. But no other project is implementing ID-WSF 2.0 WSC in Java, .Net, and LAMP. For a complete picture of the open source landscape today visit our Related OSS Projects page.