'relying party' and 'identity consumer'

[Michael Graves]

Joaquin Miller <joaquin <at> netmesh.us> writes:

> 
> Alice is surfing.  To refer to an entity, which
> requests either confirmation that it is indeed Alice or some other
> information about Alice, as an 'identity consumer' is strictly
> correct.
> http://www.joaquin.net/ODP/Part2/13.html#13.3.4Then, of course, we will all
shorten that to 'consumer.'
> Now we have Amazon being the consumer, instead of Alice.
> This is my argument, as i strongly urge that we use 'relying party'*
> instead of 'identity consumer.'
> Sure, we are all geeks and know precisely what we mean when we use a term
> of art.  But that means we can seamlessly switch to another term
> that provides much less confusion potential.
> Cordially, Joaquin

I concur. I've sorted of slid into using "Identity Consumer" over the last few
weeks, and while I'm comfortable with it, it's led to a great amount of
confusion, among tech-heads and otherwise.

"Consumer" is simply too overloaded as a term to be useful, and since part of
our mission here is to simplify and be clear about all things Identity to
average Joes, the term "Consumer" is bound to be a continuing problem. 

Now I gotta go change a bunch of HTML to reflect that....

-Mike