OpenID, the most visible of the new identity management schemas - and CardSpace, Microsoft's browser based initiative to help users control and protect their identity online have decided to play nicely together in the User-Centric Identity space. The press release is here .

A team consisting of Microsoft, VeriSign, Sxip and JanRain has been assembled to implement the new interoperability model.

It is expected that the results of the interoperability will include CardSpace support for non-Windows platforms, support in the standard OpenID Provider libraries to generate managed CardSpace compliant cards alongside OpenID assertions, OpenID support of CardSpace's anti-phishing and privacy protection measures.

Other expected benefits would be in passing attributes back and forth. For example, OpenID Simple Registration (SReg) - which allows basic information to be passed from the OpenID provider to a relying party (a website, for example) so that users don't have to constantly re-provide their name, address and email - could (and possibly should) be depreciated for the CardSpace model.

Though there is a clear direction, the end vision is still a little bit hazy. It does seem that there is a clear distinction that OpenID and CardSpace will remain two separate initiatives, but ones that will use open standards (such as WS-Trust) to support interoperability. As more is published on the subject, we will give further coverage.

For more information:

Kim Cameron's (Microsoft) post at Identity Blog
Scott Kveton's (JanRain) post at his blog
Dick Hardt's (Sxip) post over at Sxip
Johannes Ernst's (Netmesh) Comment
David Recordon's (VeriSign)post at his blog