It has been awhile since I have written about XRI here. I first mentioned it over two years ago when the company that owned the protocol, then called XNS, donated it to OASIS where the name was changed to XRI. The last time I mentioned the subject I explained more about my hope that the system would put individuals in a more powerful position to control the privacy of their personal information and I promised to publish a link to version one of the specification when it became available. Well, the rough draft of the specification was recently published.
Now comes news that XRI is getting closer to becoming real. There are a number of stories recently published about the current state of affairs for XRI, but this one really does a good job of putting things into context: New Web Services Security Spec Under Way.
The latest Digital ID newsletter put it this way:
This DataWeb protocol was too comprehensive to take in at one gulp, so it was divided into two parts - XRI (eXtensible Resource Identifier) and XDI (eXtensible Data Interchange). XRI has had an OASIS Technical Committee working on making it a standard and now that it has neared definition, OASIS is announcing the formation of the XDI TC to continue the second half of the standards process for the protocol.
The specification is making headway and now with the XDI refinement we may see a protocol that will not only give us control over our personal information, but also enable exchange and synchronize of data for the lifetime of a relationship while preserving the security and privacy of the people, businesses, devices, or applications involved. Digital identity will make the Internet a much safer place to hang out, do business, confess to loved ones, take risks, and say what we really think--even much safer than doing these things off the Internet.
I will keep you posted as the process continues to unfold.
