[OpenID] What election?

[Peter Williams]

Can we drop the bit about: noone is allowed to make money?

Certs took off when visa owned 6 percent of verisign (worth 30billion for a while) taking certs into payments. Cisco owned another tranch, putting certs into every router on the planet. Hp bullied there way into owning a share, helping validate certs as an enterprise/intranet necessary. Att did x, intel did y, nsa did z. Micosoft got shares and warrants for ssl, authenticode, smime, (even I guess ev). They all got what they wanted: partial control, and the ability to shape the public space for their missions/business interests.

This is how real boards work   (as facilitated by vc firms, often, and savvy ip development firms like rsa - sadly now a  defunct company).

-----Original Message-----
From: Johannes Ernst <jernst+openid.net at netmesh.us>
Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2008 5:32 PM
To: OpenID List <general at openid.net>
Subject: Re: [OpenID] What election?


On Dec 2, 2008, at 16:56, Eran Hammer-Lahav wrote:

> ...I'm not running on a message
> of change. I'm running on a message of a strong kick in the ass.

I would say it slightly more politely, but I largely have to agree
with you. And I'm saying this as a current board member. (please only
shoot after you read the rest of this)

I was very close to resigning from the board this summer for largely
the same reasons. For some reason, the dynamics on the current board
are always "we can't do that (yet)", instead of "done. next".

Tearing my hair out and reflecting, I believe now it's largely a
people issue; we need a different board.

The Customer Research Project that I spearheaded recently produced the
same message very loud and clear from more than a dozen long
interviews with people important to the success of OpenID, but very
little has happened since, (except for getting this election started,
which is progress of some sort even if miniscule.)

It may be of interest that I advocated for making the results of the
Customer Research Project public to the foundation membership, more or
less unvarnished as they came in. But I was voted down; if was my
belief to put the truth out there and then fix it, rather than hide it
and continue as if everything was okay, which it is not. [particular
for the kind of community that the OpenID community is...]

Would love to team up with everybody who's upset AND willing to put on
the time to make the board functional. If we have the same board
again, I'm likely to resign, EVEN if re-elected.

Thanks,



Johannes.



Johannes Ernst
NetMesh Inc.