When I can’t do a post for a month you know something’s up (or down). But this one’s up: XDI.org has finally finished and approved the Global Services Specification (GSS) that governs the operation of XDI.org’s global XRI i-name and i-number registry services (GRS). The press release of the announcement went out today.

This paves the way for a formal opening of the GRS at 7PM ET next Tuesday evening in a live ceremony at the Berkman Identity Mashup. The participating i-brokers (from 3 continents) will be announced next week at the conference.

Better still, the GSS specifies that XDI.org-accredited i-brokers will support both OpenID and SAML. That means i-name owners will be able to authenticate and share data with any site that speaks either one of these protocols.

Convergence towards real operating identity infrastructure is going to be a major theme next week. I can hardly wait. It’s only been, what, 12 years…