My friend Kim Cameron quoted Ben Laurie on Infocard and SXIP. Since it is so much fun to have these conversations in public, I thought I would chime in. Kim writes:

To the extent that sxip wants its own unique user experience that has nothing to do with the user experience of other identity systems, then any common UI is “wrong for Sxip”.  But Sxip should be able to distinguish between offering a basic identity experience within the framework of a metasystem (for example, working with InfoCard), and providing a unique value-add through its own supplementary UI (such value-add is a good and great idea).

It is not that SXIP wants to have a unique user experience, we think there are key aspects of the user experience that are dictated by Kim’s Laws of Identity that are missing from Infocard. Additionally, we think websites will want to enhance the user experience, so that the user can have an informed decision on what is happening. But I think this is the wrong point to discuss. If Infocard truly is a “Metasytem” (which WS-Trust cannot be), then why does Infocard not support the SXIP protocol? The web browser not only supports HTTP but FTP as well.