[OpenID - Eu] Status of the OpenID Foundation Euro

Tue Dec 8 01:18:39 UTC 2009

Martin, you are addressing a serious dilemma that I have given some 
thought during this nomination period. On the one side, if OIDF was 
already effectively a global organization, everyone should nominate 
themselves and everyone voting should place their votes without regard 
for nationality. But as this is clearly not the case yet, I think we 
should be excused to play some tactics in order to ensure that Europe 
gets at least one and possible two persons on the OIDF board. Of course 
we may just all vote for all the 4 European candidates. But if the 
US/International votes are distributed on four candidates, chances are 
that none of the European candidates get elected. We are certainly up 
against some VERY qualified people from the US and the rest of the world!

Last year Snorri and Nat were the only candidates from outside the US - 
and they ended up first and second overall http://openid.net/2008/12/ .

My view of the problem space for OpenID in Europe happens to be very 
similar to the one expressed by yourself, Kick, and Chris in various 
posts, and I would have nominated myself if you and Kick had not been on 
the list.

Robert and Björn definitely also have strong qualifications in different 
areas, but my impression based on your previous writings (I know none of 
the candidates in person) is that you and Kick have an edge on the 
combination of technical, business _and_ EU-political insight required 
to ensure that the European problem space can be communicated 
appropriately at the board level. And as you state yourself, I think 
that Kick as a Dutch ("core EU") candidate will carry more weight as a 
reference in our local danish efforts to deploy OpenID than Estonia and 
Switzerland.

So my personal "Danish/European" proposal is that we as a European team 
rather than competing individuals should consider:
a. Pool the European votes around one or possibly two candidates, in my 
view 1. Kick, 2. Martin
b. Structure the work to combine our efforts whereever possible and 
useful - and jointly supporting our elected board member(s).

PS: I have copied Kick and Björn on this mail. I don't know if Björn is 
even aware of the OpenID Europe (OIDE) history and current issues: 
http://wiki.openid.net/OIDE-2010

=henrik

Martin Paljak wrote:
> You stand much closer to the '"core EU" than Estonia, so it should be 
> easier there. Yet Estonia, as an even smaller and younger country, has 
> been able to make some things happen much faster on local level than 
> Holland, that can be taken as positive examples for the rest of the EU.
> As such, I think it is important that we can join forces ASAP, to the extent possible in a short term. If we can establish some basic rules and joint interests we should make sure that we get a representation in the OIDF board. Currently I count 5 non-US nominees, one from India and 4 from EU (Robert Ott from from Switzerland, Kick Willemse from Netherlands, Björn Woltermann from Germany and me myself from Estonia) We should make sure that we get active representation at OIDF. Maybe we can pool votes to get a capable and active representative who would advance our common agenda at OIDF? We got a very well publicized representative - Snorri - last year but unfortunately he has not been able to be active during the past year and as such has been removed from the board.
>
>
> Ideas or proposals?
>
>
>
>   
>> Op 7 dec 2009, om 11:46 heeft Martin Paljak het volgende geschreven:
>>
>>     
>>> On 07.12.2009, at 0:24, Henrik Biering wrote:
>>>       
>>>> http://wiki.openid.net/OIDE-2010  (the page is placed in the "foundation" folder)
>>>>         
>>> Some thoughts on the current state of affairs and what could be possible developments in near future.
>>>
>>> First, some harsh comments on the current situation:
>>>
>>> 1. Gathering people from all EU countries to see if it makes something happen does not seem to work. Other than providing a point of contact in some country to a person that is generally interested in OpenID, I don't believe it serves a better purpose currently. It seems a bit like social-networking-space land-grabbing as in domain business. I've not seen any other interesting developments from the OIDE, joint ventures or public statements. One could say that it is because of lack of interest or organizational skills but a formal foundation is not required beforehand to build upon those skills.
>>>
>>> 2. Purpose of the foundation needs to be clearly defined. "Regional coverage of OIDF in EU who deals with paperwork and other bureaucracy" is something that I, personally, don't see as useful. OIDF has the funds to hire a professional paper-muncher to do it, if needed. That includes domains, trademarks and whatever other  assets OIDF thinks it needs to protect. 
>>>
>>> Some problem points that affect possible future developments:
>>> 1. Fragmentation of the EU landscape. The "Kissinger question" ("Who do I call if I want to call Europe?") problem haunts it. This includes commercial, political as well as cultural fragmentation. OIDE covering the whole EU only makes sense when the goals are related to EU-wide goals. Only a "soft, political agenda" does serve the community in the very long term but has no probable interesting outcomes in the near future, IMHO.
>>>
>>> 2. Lack of funding and lack of focused interest, partly because of the Kissinger question problem. The way I see it, OIDF has served its purpose very well by gathering corporate members who have financed the "sale" of OpenID to the government. Because it is not easy (or possible?) in EU to target a specific lobby group or influential person to get a statement like the one from the Obama government, lack of interest from major companies is understandable. It is easier to work in your country of origin rather than try to influence the EU level.
>>>
>>> 3. As Snorri gave all the trademark rights to OIDF, OIDE has no real "assets" to protect or to develop. The fact itself is not a bad thing - but to advance anything in the EU, on the EU level, finances are needed. They either come from OIDF, who has interests in OpenID or from (corporate) members of OIDE (none this far?). Unlike in the US, I don't belive that corporate OIDF members have the interest to allocate funds for EU affairs, as there is no clear roadmap for a useful outcome to the corporate members.
>>>
>>> Some possible developments:
>>> 1. IMHO, Unless OIDE can attract corporate members to advance its (currently missing) agenda or allocate funds from OIDF (that has no obligation whatsoever to do so), there is no point in having a formal organization in EU, at least not in the form it currently exists. Having a functioning organization requires resources which apparently are not available.
>>>
>>> 2. 2010 is in theory the year when EU countries should have eID cards and cross-border usage of them should be possible. In real life we're not there yet. Some countries have experimented with OpenID, in relation to eID cards and separately, government endorsed and without the blessing. I don't believe there's a country with a strong and realistic identity related roadmap including OpenID in the plans, same applies to EU, AFAIK. This is a huge possibility to OpenID where different countries and different parties could benefit from co-operation.
>>>
>>> 3. Set a target to figure out, coordinate and implement a single  EU-level joint operation between big or mid-sized companies and web environments who already make use of OpenID to seamlessly re-use identities. Something like Plaxo and Google did. This is a difficult thing to do, again because internet is global, most of internet-savvy users use Gmail anyway and there is this language barrier in EU and local services... The same way as DARPA finances interesting projects in the US, EU funds both research as well as practical development projects. OIDE should have a leading role in   such projects, connecting companies, universities and public sector, driving the PR efforts. Unfortunately there has been no public sign of such activities. 
>>>
>>> 4. For the generic PR, "be on the scene" activities that OIDE currently tries to fill, set a common agenda that would take into account the opinions and interests of existing relevant providers and RP-s in EU and jointly execute it. I've introduced OpenID (and our service) on several events and articles but even if I wanted to talk about some generic "How are things in EU" points, I've had no references other than I know by example from the Internet. There is no progress tracking place or agreed talking points.
>>>
>>>
>>> Unfortunately, the OpenID2009 website which Snorri created is no longer available. I remember it contained a few points that were all really nice but really hard targets to measure. That's something that should be changed: set targets that can be measured, that make sense in practical terms and that would be useful as well as profitable (not necessarily in terms of direct positive balance) to those involved.
>>>
>>> Disclosure: I'm the owner of openid.ee, the OpenID provider in Estonia that uses EU ID mechanisms (ID cards and WPKI capable GSM phones)  to provide strong on-line authentication and digital signature services to companies as a paid service.
>>> -- 
>>> Martin Paljak
>>> http://martin.paljak.pri.ee
>>> +372.515.6495
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> eu mailing list
>>> eu at lists.openid.net
>>> http://lists.openid.net/mailman/listinfo/openid-eu
>>>       
>
>   
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