The three companies are contributing code to Project Higgins, an Eclipse tools project formerly known as the Eclipse Trust Framework, which is based on a concept developed by Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
IBM said it intends to incorporate Higgins technology into its Tivoli identity management software, while Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts-based Parity is planning to build a business around it once it has emerged from stealth mode later this year.
Paul Trevithick, Parity co-founder and CEO, is also project lead for Higgins and co-founded the Berkman Center’s SocioPhysics.org project along with Berkman senior fellow and Parity chairman and co-founder, John Clippinger, and Parity VP of marketing and business development, Mary Ruddy.
Project Higgins is designed to enable users to manage and control their online personal information by deciding what information they want to share with web sites that also make use of the technology.