Starting Points

What is the Identity Commons?
The purpose of Identity Commons is to support, facilitate, and promote the creation of an open identity layer for the Internet — one that maximizes control, convenience, and privacy for the individual while encouraging the development of healthy, interoperable communities.

Identity Commons Values
We believe in the dignity of Human individual in the context of the digital world.

In order to make this true we strive for a balance of factors and values as digital systems and tools evolve:
 * Individual control, convenience & privacy
 * Sharing of information when participating in community
 * Support for commercial and non-commercial exchange
 * Interoperability and openness between systems

We work to bring these values into practice by fostering a collaborative a community of individuals, organizations and companies share these values and are working together towards practical technical implementations.

We share a pragmatic idealism.

We work to practice what we preach and have openness and transparency in what we do.

The Identity Commons Evangelism & Marketing Workgroup is working to continually improve communication about Identity Commons values and relevancy.

Identity Commons Shared Principles

 * 1) Self-Organization. Enable any working group to self-organize at any time, on any scale, in any form, around any activity consistent with the Purpose and Principles.
 * 2) Transparency. Fully and transparently disclose the Purpose and Principles of each working group, any requirement of participation, and any license or restriction of usage of its work product.
 * 3) Inclusion. Conduct deliberations and make decisions by bodies and methods that reasonably represent all relevant and affected parties.
 * 4) Empowerment. Vest authority, perform functions, and use resources in the smallest or most local part that includes all relevant and affected parties.
 * 5) Collaboration. Resolve conflict without resort to economic, legal, or other duress.
 * 6) Openness. Conduct, publish, and archive communications in a manner that facilitates open and trusted interactions within and across all working groups and the public Internet.
 * 7) Dogfooding. When feasible and appropriate, employ the work product of Identity Commons working groups to facilitate the operation and interaction of Identity Commons itself.

How does the Community work?
Kaliya has written an excellent explanation of the inner workings of the Identity Commons community on her blog Identity Woman. The post is entitled What the Heck is Identity Commons?

Who are the players
Lexicon

Identity Gang Mailing List