HP joins Liberty Alliance

Signs up for single sign-on

By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco • Get more from this author

Posted in Business, 19th December 2001 20:27 GMT

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Seven companies are to join the MS Passport-rival Liberty Alliance today, amongst them Hewlett Packard. That's a hugely significant addition because when Sun put the coalition together, its chief server rivals IBM and HP were missing. So it'll be hard to sustain the 'friends of Sun' jibe at the Liberty Alliance now.

The Alliance seeks to build an open alternative to Microsoft's Passport hub, giving punters to ability to use a common sign-on identity at participating sites. The others new members include General Motors, Mastercard and AOL-Time Warner who had already confirmed that they'd be joining Liberty. And the grouping also adds another telco, in the shape of France Telecom.

Holy Smoke

We're still assured the name is a working title only. Type www.libertyalliance.org into your browser, and you'll find Jerry Falwell's website. The domain was registered back in 1997 and is a Falwell Ministries affliate. The IT Liberty Alliance can be found here. We'll resist the obvious gags about getting authenticated into the next life... ®