The Sun Microsystem’s backed “Liberty Alliance Project” appears to be an open-source counter proposal to Microsoft’s Passport. I say “appears” because at this point not that much is know about the details of either system from a practical perspective.

This InfoWorld article gives a good overview of the announcement of Liberty by Sun and its partners. It also makes the obvious conclusion that this is still largely vaporware.

While it is still too early to tell what will come of these “universal log-on” services, it is important for us to watch this area develop. The proliferation of log-on schemes and user ID/password combinations is one hindrance to web usability that would be nice to do away with. Authenticated surfing may not please privacy advocates, but it should make content sites happy if they can start offering the bulk of currently free content as “free when authenticated” in the future. A lot of the “1–1 Marketing” hyperbole comes closer to reality when you can recognize people and their associated profiles on each visit. If Passport and/or Liberty succeed, I predict that we won’t see ANY content sites that offer more than headlines without authentication.