Eric Norlin posted a great piece about Kim Cameron as the news started to come out about InfoCards (an MS codename) this week. Kim himself explains how the story started coming out without anyone ever checking with him.

I just want to go on record that Kim is 100% the real thing. I’ve never met anyone like him. The Laws didn’t come from any preconceived agenda or marketing spin, they came straight from the heart of Kim’s lifetime of messaging and metadirectory experience and his passion for creating a true Internet-wide identity infrastructure that will finally usher in what he calls “the big bang” — the explosion of new applications that will be possible with authenticated online trust relationships (also known as the Social Web.)

As he began to talk to the open standard/open source/open trust community about the basic principles and architecture underlying InfoCards — and the fact that it must be an open, platform-independent solution that we all agree to, not unlike TCP/IP itself — he ran into a steady stream of gaping jaws. Could this be this the same Microsoft that had only three years ago proposed Passport and Hailstorm to the world?

Well, it’s not the same Microsoft. It’s the Kim Cameron-inspired Microsoft. Call me a starry-eyed optimist, but to put a twist on my favorite quote from Margaret Mead : “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change Microsoft. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

Kim needs our support to pull this off. He’s got mine.