Accounts & SSO

Accounts & SSO

Accounts & SSO as used by Ubuntu
Original author(s)	Nokia
Developer(s)	Intel, Canonical Ltd, KDE
Initial release	November 16, 2009
Stable release	Varying[1]
Development status	Active
Written in	C (glib), C++ (Qt)
Operating system	Unix-like
Available in	Multilingual
Type	Single sign-on framework
License	GNU LGPL 2.1
Website	01.org/gsso/

Accounts & SSO, accounts-sso, or lately gSSO is a single sign-on framework for computers.

Originating as part of Maemo 5^[2] Accounts-SSO is free software licensed under LGPL 2.1. Accounts-SSO was deployed as a standard component of Nokia N900, Nokia N9,^[3] Tizen,^[4] and Ubuntu.^[5] Later it was integrated in KDE Plasma Workspaces.^[6][7]

History

Accounts-SSO was originally developed by Nokia who eventually shipped it as part of Maemo 5^[2] on November 16, 2009.^[8][9]

It was later integrated into MeeGo 1.2 Handset software platform^[10][11] which was formally released on May 18, 2011.^[12]

After the MeeGo project ended, Accounts-SSO was transferred into an independent project by Intel.^[13] Canonical Ltd then adopted Accounts-SSO for Ubuntu 12.10^[14] (later also Ubuntu Touch^[15]) and KDE integrated it in November 2012.^[16]

Features

Among Accounts-SSO’s features are a plugin-based architecture, working with diverse user interfaces, storage back-ends, and varying levels of security.^[3][13][17]

While Accounts-SSO is primarily being used for centralized login management to social networking services, e.g. sharing photos to a service from an image managing application and chatting on the same service from an instant messenger, its plugin-based architecture also allows for local usage, such as disk encryption for which a cryptsetup plugin for Accounts-SSO was developed.^[18]

The Accounts-SSO framework consists of several individually released components:

• signond: A daemon providing the SSO service over D-Bus – originally Qt-based, it’s being rewritten by Intel using only GLib.^[19]
• libaccounts-glib: GLib-based client library for managing the accounts database.^[20]
• libaccounts-qt: Client library for managing the accounts database for Qt-based applications^[21] – implemented as wrapper around libaccounts-glib.^[3]
• libsignon-glib: GLib-based client library for applications handling account authentication through the signond Single Sign-On service.^[22]
• signon plugins: A handful of signond authentication plugins are developed within the Accounts-SSO project. Among them plugins for Digest access,^[23] OAuth,^[24] SASL,^[25] and X.509.^[26]
• account plugins: The Accounts-SSO project leaves development of plugins for specific services to 3rd parties. Open source plugins for various services (Facebook, Google, Twitter,…) are being developed by Canonical.^[27]

See also

• List of single sign-on implementations

External links

• Official website
• Development home on Gitlab.com
• KDE Online Accounts
• Ubuntu Online Accounts on Launchpad.net

References

1. "Accounts & SSO framework announcements". Google Project Hosting. Retrieved 2013-03-23.
2. "Maemo 5.0 to MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan binary compatibility report". Linuxtesting.org. Retrieved 2013-03-26. libaccounts-qt.so.1: Maemo 5.0: added
3. Sam (2011-08-16). "The Meego Accounts & Single Sign On Project". Meegoexperts.com. Retrieved 2013-03-23.
4. David Christopher King. "Ubuntu Online Accounts: credentials management for application developers" (PDF). FOSDEM 2013. Retrieved 2013-03-23.
5. "GNOME Online Accounts: why it is the way it is". Debarshiray.wordpress.com. Retrieved 2013-03-23.
6. "KDE Online Accounts". KDE. Retrieved 2013-03-23.
7. "KDE Telepathy joins KDE Applications release bundle as fully ported to Plasma 5". Marty's typepad. Retrieved 2015-03-06.
8. "Maemo 5 final release: firmware and updated SDK | flors". Flors.wordpress.com. Retrieved 2013-03-26.
9. "Maemo 5/PR1.0 - maemo.org wiki". Wiki.maemo.org. Retrieved 2013-03-26.
10. "Integrating account management to applications". Harmattan-dev.nokia.com. 2012-04-24. Retrieved 2013-03-26.
11. "Index of /MeeGo/releases/1.2.0/repos/oss/source". Repo.meego.com. Retrieved 2013-03-26.
12. "1.2 Release". MeeGo. Retrieved 2013-03-26.
13. "accounts-sso – Accounts & SSO framework". Google Project Hosting. Retrieved 2013-03-23.
14. "Online Accounts landed in Ubuntu 12.10 as default | Iloveubuntu: Ubuntu blog". Iloveubuntu. 2012-08-22. Retrieved 2013-03-26.
15. "Online Accounts setup for Ubuntu Touch in Launchpad". Launchpad.net. Retrieved 2013-07-03.
16. Added by Àlex Fiestas 4 months ago (2012-11-29). "Web Account Management System - Revision 2a0be841 - KDE Projects". Projects.kde.org. Retrieved 2013-03-26.
17. "Online Accounts | Ubuntu App Developer". Canonical Ltd. Retrieved 2013-03-23.
18. "extensions/cryptsetup". Google Project Hosting. Retrieved 2013-04-17.
19. Alexander Kanavin (March 15, 2013). "GNOME Online Accounts: why it is the way it is". Retrieved 2013-04-15. […] just a quick note to you all that we (Intel OTC) are rewriting the SSO daemon and authentication plugins in C using glib and gdbus […]
20. "Part I. libaccounts-glib Overview". Docs.accounts-sso.googlecode.com. Retrieved 2013-04-15.
21. "accounts-qt: Accounts-Qt library". Docs.accounts-sso.googlecode.com. 2012-10-11. Retrieved 2013-04-15.
22. "libsignon-glib". Docs.accounts-sso.googlecode.com. Retrieved 2013-04-15.
23. "signon-plugin-digest". Google Project Hosting. Retrieved 2013-04-15.
24. "ANNOUNCE: Release of signon-plugin-oauth2 0.15". Google Discussion Groups. Retrieved 2013-04-15.
25. "gsignond-plugin-sasl". Google Project Hosting. Retrieved 2013-04-15.
26. "signon-plugin-x509". Google Project Hosting. Retrieved 2013-04-15.
27. "Ubuntu: "account-plugins" package". Launchpad.net. Retrieved 2013-04-15.