[OpenID] Purpose of OpenID Foundation and the Elections

[Martin Atkins]

Jack Cleaver wrote:
> 
> Imagine that you *could* just whip your OpenID out at any
> (likely-looking) website, in the expectation that (like AMEX) even if it
> were not acceptable, people would at least know what it was. As far as I
> can see, with OpenID that is technically impossible. There is no way to
> distinguish an OpenID email identifier from an ordinary email address,
> no way to distinguish an OpenID URL from any other URL, and no way to
> distinguish an XRI used as an OpenID identifier from a vanilla XRI.
> 

There is in fact a way to distingish an OpenID URL (or email address, or 
XRI) from a vanilla one: discovery.

The very same mechanism that allows consumers to find the OpenID 
provider for an identifier implicitly answers the question "Is this an 
OpenID identifier?".

If discovery fails, the URL you're holding is not an OpenID identifier.