[OpenID] why is xri so obtuse?

Recordon, David drecordon at verisign.com
Tue Jan 2 05:31:38 UTC 2007


So catching up on this thread, in order so haven't read it all, but I
don't think Greg and Dmitry are referring to the IP being free.  Rather
the cost of the i-name registration.  I think the reason this is called
out, versus a domain registration fee, is that i-names are a new
technology unlike URLs which are quite established as being a key part
of Internet infrastructure. :)
 
--David

________________________________

From: general-bounces at openid.net [mailto:general-bounces at openid.net] On
Behalf Of Kaliya *
Sent: Monday, January 01, 2007 2:24 PM
To: Dmitry Shechtman
Cc: general at openid.net
Subject: Re: [OpenID] why is xri so obtuse?


One of the things I am working on this week writing up some community
history.

What does free mean? In the context of open standards this is a valid
question.   Originally the IP that is in XRI was all tied up and owned
by a company.  It was working on bringing it to market....at a meeting
attended by internet notables about it....basically they said this is
great but it will NEVER work if you own the IP no one will adopt it.  

So the company did the right thing and turned over all the IP to a
nonprofit to be held for the public good - XDI.ORG (it was originally
XNSORG).  

It was clear that a name space was a critical element of this technology
-  - this would have to be run by someone.  This is what this company
does now...It runs a global registry for the namespace.  People are not
howling wildly that OpenID is based on domain names that you must pay a
yearly fee for.  Both are world wide infrastructure that needs to work
otherwise the web doesn't work. Money needs to come from somewhere to
pay for it and registration of names is one place to do that.   (Yes I
have heard from my anarchist geek friends about how in theory it would
be possible to do addressing in ways without a central root).   

The XRI/XDI community is small but vibrant and working really hard to
develop open source code that folks can use to do all sorts of stuff.
It has a range of folks participating in it including domain registrars
from around the world, Boeing, Higgins project, small starups.  The
community that founded the first Identity Commons had extensive
connection to the i-names technology because at the time...3-4 years ago
it was the only user-centric game in town. 

In terms of the including of XRI's in OpenID. .. I already said it
before in this thread there was 3 different valid approaches for
distributed user-centric identity that were all going to go to market
and compete...imagine if there was 3 different login boxes that were
proliferating....you all wouldn't be here adopting the one thing that
everyone worked hard on for a year to get convergence (The 4th approach
even joined our efforts in the summer).    There is momentum behind what
is now branded OpenID2 because all these different efforts collaborated.


We had a period where we considered a different like Yaids or a name to
be determined...it was decided that we not move away from the most
unrecognizable brand but update it to a version 2. 

I am happy to answer any more questions about how we got here or why
things are the way they are. I have been working in this little niche
for almost three years full time.  Some folks like Drummond have been
working on brining about this sort of technology for 15 years.   There
are 'really simple' easy ways to do things - how OpenID started out.
There are ways to deal with more complex use-cases and business needs
too.  Having a balance and supporting things working together is what
this is about.  

Just so it is not a surprise the OpenID folks are talking to the SAML
folks about how those two standards can work well together. 

=Kaliya 

On 1/1/07, Dmitry Shechtman <damnian at gmail.com> wrote: 

	I just realized that I missed a spot. The "kind suggestion"
refers to a part
	from Victor's response he had chosen to omit for some reason:
	
	> I'd be willing to test your application with my i-name when
you're ready, 
	if that helps.
	
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