The OpenSSO Project is soliciting feedback on their Early Access Build -- OpenSSO Express Build 5. With the release of this build, community members now have the opportunity to participate in the Early Access (EA) program for Sun's next commercial offering. Review the Early Access documentation and hammer away at Express Build 5! Send your EA feedback to opensso.eafeedback@dev.java.net so we can make the product perfect. Thanks in advance!

The latest addition to our growing line of OpenSSO Extensions is an authentication module for Information Cards - it enables OpenSSO as an Information Card Relying Party, allowing end users to authenticate via Windows CardSpace or other identity selectors such as DigitalMe or xmldap. This initial version of the authentication module was written and kindly contributed to OpenSSO by Patrick Petit (pictured) formerly of Sun, now an independent consultant; it also uses the xmldap relying party code, originally written by Chuck Mortimore, another Sun alumni - make of that what you will

The README has details of how to build and deploy the authentication module on OpenSSO build 2 or build 3. I tried it out this afternoon - I enabled OpenSSO for information cards in under an hour. Great work, Patrick!

As I just reported over at Superpatterns, Martin Gee of ICSynergy (one of Sun's system integrator partners, focussing on identity management, federation and SOA) has written a great Sun Developer Network article on adding CardSpace authentication to OpenSSO. If you're interested in how CardSpace works, or how to extend OpenSSO to support new authentication mechanisms, head on over and take a look.