* Peter Gietz peter.gietz@daasi.de [2019-04-26 18:24]:
- another advantage of entity categories is that you need not configure
release policies for every single SP but rather for a group of SPs
Yes, thanks for the reminder! In the case of most library SPs the existing signalling methods (how an SP tells IDPs what it needs) may suffice (RequestedAttribute, NameIDFormat) which is why I didn't consider it as necessary here as in other cases. But yeah, that's the main use-case and this would still help.
- the reason for an entity category for coco supporting publishers was
rather to prevent the release of personal attributes than to further it (the later can be done by the Coco entity category)
Interesting idea. (No irony here this time.) It's just that not releasing anything is the problem we've been trying to fight for years now.
Since entity categories should be defined to be composed (combined) without side-effects no category should be defined with negated requirements (only addition, not subtraction). So the literal case of a category signalling "do NOT send x,y,z to this service" (which is not what you meant, I think) wouldn't be welcome at all. But no other thing you/we invent would cause IDPs sending too much today to stopping from doing so.
If all you wanted was documentation or a guidelines that tell IDPs not too send too much then I'm not convinced we need an Entity Category for that. So I think the motivations and specific aims here require some more discussions.
- I would propose to postpone the "below-whole-institution"-level contracts
use case until libraries and/or publishers on this list state that this is a real world use case now or potentially in future. I must confess I had second thoughts about this and may be the restriction of access only for sub groups of an higher ed institution might not be inline with freedom of research, why shouldn't e.g. a neuroscientist (life science) not be interested in resources on religious extasy practices (humanities).
While I couldn't agree more personally that is not the only approach, AFAIK.
The only real world use case could be study material for students of particular fields. I just brought this up, because it could be in the interest of libraries to spend less money on a license if the user group is restricted. @all: are you aware of use cases like that?
I think Jiří presented some on this list before, otherwise I wouldn't have kept mentioning them. But sure, always design for real needs, not theoretical use-cases.
- and yes the discussion on entity categories could be done on a more
technical oriented list first to stop boring the majority on this list.
I'd invite you to re-start this discussion on the REFEDS list and I'll chime in and help as good as I can. (Modulo not working next week.)
Best, -peter