Higgins trust framework

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Higgins trust framework is an open source framework that enables users and other systems to integrate identity, profile, and relationship information across multiple heterogeneous systems. Higgins enables developers to write to a common API for Identity management, rather than needing to support multiple identity management systems individually. Software applications written to Higgins will allow people to store their digital identities and profile information in places of their choice and to share the stored information with companies and other parties in a controlled fashion. The Higgins Project was created by SocialPhysics.org and is receiving contributions from IBM and Novell. Higgins used to be called Eclipse trust framework, and is a project of the Eclipse Foundation.

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Provide a consistent user experience based on card icons for the management and release of identity data. This is needed in order to have a trusted mechanism for authentication and other interactions that is less vulnerable to phishing and other attacks and that works for a wide variety of users and systems.
Empower users with more convenience and control over personal information distributed across external information silos. Provide a single point of control over multiple identities, preferences and relationships. The lack of a trusted infrastructure that allows people to selectively share information on the web while protecting their privacy is limiting the growth and use of the Internet. Working in partnership with development organizations and academic research groups, this project is creating a key part of the open source infrastructure required for an open, accountable, socially-searchable web while ensuring privacy and personal control over identity information.
Provide an API and data model for the virtual integration and federation of identity and security information from a wide variety of sources. Although there continue to be attempts to create a single universal identity system, the reality is that we will live in a heterogeneous, multi-protocol, world for a long time. Rather than introduce yet another new system or protocol, Higgins defines several kinds of provider plug-ins that allow developers to create adapters to legacy systems, protocols, and security format types. Previously the application developer who needed to integrate identity systems was forced to learn the intricacies of each system and/or protocol. The lack of a common API meant that this learning investment was not transferable. Higgins offers a common API/framework, provides sample services, and encourages developers to create provider plug-ins for existing and new systems.
Provide plug-in adapters to enable existing data sources including directories, communications systems, collaboration systems and databases each using differing protocols and schemas to be integrated into the framework. To encourage the development of plug-in adaptors to common systems, the Higgins project is creating a set of exemplary “provider” plug-ins. The project welcomes the participation of organizations and individual developers to create plug-ins for their software packages.
Provide a social relationship data integration framework that enables these relationships to be persistent and reusable across application boundaries. It organizes relationships into a set of distinct social contexts within which a person expresses different personas and roles. The existence of common identity and social relationship framework makes possible new kinds of applications. Applications that make it easy to manage identities, relationships, reputation and trust within and across multiple contexts. Of particular interest are applications that work on behalf of a user to manage their own profiles, relationships, and reputation across their various personal and professional groups, teams, and other organizational affiliations while preserving their privacy. These applications could, for example, provide users with the ability to: discover new groups through shared affinities; find new team members based on reputation and background; sort, filter and visualize their social networks. Applications could be used by organizations to build and manage their networks of networks.