"Scott" reported on a couple of commentaries on "Liberty Alliance" by Doug Kaye and Patricia Seybold.  Both commented on LA 1.0 spec as being marketing-oriented and did not offer much to the consumers.  I agree completely and that is why I like LA.  Let me explain.

LA is an unusually large group of influential companies from most segments of the online market.  With the exception of Apache Foundation, each of those companies are profit driven meaning they seek to profit from LA initiative, either by increased revenue or cost saving.  Consumers and privacy issues are secondary to these companies, meaning those issues matters only if it affect their primary concerns: profit and growth.  So it is not a surprise to me that LA 1.0 spec addresses consumer and privacy concerns only from "what can we get away with?" point of view expressed in marketing smoothtalk.

What I like about LA is that it is a very large and very diverse group, not unlike realworld LA.  What I am looking forward to is how the group leadership will change in the future.  Sun has no real impact in security nor customer markets, so leadership change is likely in the near future.  What I am predicting is that juxtaposition of diverse self-interests will eventually centered around customers concerns because these issues are really all they have in common other than the need for profit.

FYI, current LA President, Eric Dean from United Airlines, resigned as of Friday.