Posted 11:02 PM (0) comments

IIW spring 2010

Time to register for the spring Internet Identity Workshop. Do it now.

Labels: IIW

Posted 10:51 AM (0) comments

Is there a future for OpenID?

Johannes Ernst, one of the founders of OpenID (and the OpenID Foundation) has just posted a thought provoking piece about the present state - and the future - of that protocol ("Is OpenID Still User-Centric?")

I've pointed out before the problems between the OpenID evangelists (typically folks who do their own implementations, support open source projects and bemoan corporate or commercial involvement) and the major web organizations (Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Facebook, et al) who have adapted OpenID to their own purposes.

This is the often unspoken but nevertheless almost inevitable path that any successful open source project follows.

Perhaps it's time to truly fork the project. Let the "big boys" continue on with their "NASCAR billboards", PKI and whatever other baggage they want to heap on top of the simple protocol. Let the open source evangelists take the simplicity that was OpenID 1.1 and re-style it to it's original purpose - locking in the development stream so that the aggrandizement can't happen again. It's not too late, and the upcoming IIW would be a good place to talk about it.

Labels: IIW, open source, openid