Date

Attendees

Goals

  • Our focus for this call will be to create a list of what items in the existing MRPS template need to be changed (this thread from the REFEDS list back in August of last year might help if you’re new to the topic). I’ve created a Google doc copy for us to comment on (easier to do in real-time during a call) and a branch to the MRPS GitHub repository to help encourage a broader review of proposed changes.

Discussion items

TimeItemWhoNotes
10 min

Administrivia

  • Introductions
  • Meetings (regular or as needed?)
  • GitHub and Google Doc
Heather
  • Introductions
    • Terry - identifying organizations and verifying they are who they say they are; less reliance on DNS and looking more at local government registries. AAF is updating their federation rules which may offer some ideas (but probably not)
    • Casper - topic came up in eduGAIN steering. They were assessing federations and noticed that the MRPS needs to be updated.
    • Guy - validation is a big problem. There is more use of cloud providers. Suggesting this as a template for new federations when we know it's broken is not a good thing.
    • Alex - currently use WHOIS to validate ownership of a domain name to an org, and it does work for some but not all.
  • Meeting cadence
    • asynchronously makes more sense given the geographic spread
  • Github / Google doc
    • Split into two GitHub repositories, one for minimal version and one example version
 45 minTemplate

Do we drop the URN scheme?

  • Consensus on the call is that URNs are the devil (we acknowledge they exist, but we do not endorse them as good practice)

How quickly can we get this done?

Do we want to have as small a doc as possible (removing things like URN scheme) and holding the other bits in a GitHub issue for when new federations need it?

  • having a clean doc with fewer choices is a good idea, but having one with sample wording would be good, too. Maybe two separate documents? Current doc has informative text in call-out boxes. Note that new federations often include those call-out boxes (which they shouldn't). New federations will just take what is there and fill it in. Can we have a demo one for "Example University?" Yes
  • It needs to be as easy to use as possible
  • Need to separate out the issues of the gui

Group will focus on Section 5. Entity Eligibility and Validation

  • See https://github.com/REFEDS/MRPS/pull/8
    • the PR may not go into sufficient detail; some of the examples won't apply. Still, want to future-proof the doc. Include the detail in explanatory notes.
  • Note that this is not a policy; it is a template that is open to some interpretation.
  • if we move the explanation to a separate doc (e.g., the REFEDS wiki) then we can more easily update the examples while leaving the text alone
  • There seems to be no differentiation between validation of SPs and IdPs - should there be?
    • Different Federations handle this differently; we don't need to cover every use case, just provide an example of what can work. We're not trying to get everyone do the same thing, it's to provide documentation so others can see what a given federation chose to do.

Suggest we remove the MS Word doc entirely to help mitigate the thoughtless copy/paste. Direct people to the markdown version.





Action items