[OpenID board] OpenID Foundation and Japan

Nobuhiro Seki nseki at sixapart.jp
Sun Feb 10 23:30:12 UTC 2008


Hi all,

I am Nob Seki, General Manager of Six Apart for Japan. Let me give you a 
quick overview of the market.

Adoption of OpenID in Japan is almost as quick as that in the US, so it 
is great if we can show some momentum to the Japanese market. The 
biggest ID provider, Yahoo Japan, announced the adoption of OpenID on 
the same day of the announcement of Yahoo!, Inc, and some major ID 
providers, such as Microsoft Japan, Livedoor and Hatena, already support 
OpenID. (Google's Blogger does not have big presence in the Japanese 
market -- yet ;-)

Especially after the corporate board was established at OIDF last week, 
big attention to OpenID has been made in the Japanese market, so it 
would be great if we do something soon in the market. FYI, David will 
come to Tokyo in the week of Feb 25, so we may have a press conference 
describing the general principle of OIDF to the rest of the world then.

Me personally likes Option 2 (no legal entity but a virtual chapter of 
OIDF) because (a) it is easy and quick, (b) Japanese providers do not 
have to take part in two entities (OIDF and its Japanese entity), and 
(c) clear affiliation b/w OIDF and Japanese providers is made 
(contribution should be made to OIDF, not its Japanese entity if 
established).

That's my personal thought, so please feel free to discuss further!
Thanks,
Nob Seki (nseki at sixapart.jp)
Six Apart, Ltd.

David Recordon wrote:
> Hi all,
> I'm trying to bring together a few different threads of conversation 
> around formalizing OpenID in Japan.  Six Apart KK, NRI, and VeriSign 
> KK have been speaking for the past few months about the desire to both 
> protect OpenID intellectual property in Japan as well as having an 
> organization to promote and encourage adoption of OpenID via.  So far 
> there seem to be a few possibilities (feel free to correct me if I'm 
> wrong):
>  1) Do not establish any legal entity or formal recognition of members 
> of the OpenID Foundation from Japan
>  2) Do not establish a legal entity in Japan but somehow recognize 
> members of the OpenID Foundation from Japan
>  3) Establish a legal entity in Japan which is not formally part of 
> the OpenID Foundation, but is recognized like OpenID Europe Foundation
>  4) Establish a legal entity in Japan which is formally a part of the 
> OpenID Foundation (eg Mozilla Europe)
>
> Obviously there are various pros and cons to each choice, though we 
> should also remember that the decision here will most likely dictate 
> the outcome of future similar scenarios.  I'd be especially interested 
> in the views of the multi-national companies especially those also 
> working with OpenID internationally.
>
> --David
>



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