Partnering with the Internet2 Middleware Initiative since 1998, MACE consists of a group of U.S. and international higher-education IT architects. The group was formed to investigate the creation of a national interoperable identity and access management infrastructure for the U.S. research and education community that would fit into a global context. To do this, MACE developed an interoperable identity and access management architecture model and worked to provide functionality important to higher education but missing from the marketplace or open source offerings.
To facilitate sharing of resources and collaboration, Shibboleth software was developed as a standards-compliant system. It supports authenticating users and authorizing access between different identity management and resource provider domains while enabling user privacy, if required. This functionality is useful both within an organization, such as between central campus and a medical center, and among organizations, such as between a campus and its third-party service or content providers.
The Shibboleth System is open source software, using nonrestrictive licensing terms to promote its wide adoption in open source and proprietary products. Shibboleth is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license.
Using open design and development processes, the Shibboleth project has benefited from contributions by dozens of participants from academic organizations around the world and from partners in industry. In particular, the digital library community has provided significant help clarifying licensed-content scenarios and generating interest from commercial content services.
As part of its overall mission of meeting the needs of higher education, Internet2 has established the InCommon Federation as a formal federation of organizations focused on creating a common framework for trust in support of U.S. research and education. InCommon supports the use of Shibboleth software by its participants, both identity providers (primarily U.S. higher education sites) and resource providers (partners such as commercial information and service providers, as well as higher-education resource sites).
The Shibboleth Project has also seen worldwide adoption of its software. Federations in other countries are under development or in production. These valuable colleagues around the globe have provided invaluable suggestions and contributions to the Shibboleth Project. For a list of national and international efforts involving the integration, development, or extension of Shibboleth, see Related Projects.
The Project would like to extend thanks to a number of people and organizations, in particular to Internet2 and the National Science Foundation for the funding and support. In addition, there are a number of partners internationally.
For information on Using the Shibboleth Trademark, see the Trademark Guidelines and Styleguide.
If you would like to get involved in or contribute to the Shibboleth Project, please contact us.
