[OpenID] Purpose of OpenID Foundation and the Elections

Christian Scholz / Tao Takashi (SL) tao.takashi at googlemail.com
Mon Dec 15 17:58:42 UTC 2008


Hi!

On Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 5:00 PM, David Recordon <drecordon at sixapart.com> wrote:
> Hey Pat,
> I think it's something that is hard to predict the best answer to and
> a decision that cannot be made by the OpenID community alone.  Getting
> to agreement between communities that we need a marketable brand for
> the "open stack" is the first step.  The second is deciding what that
> brand is.

I wonder how to start though.. First there needs to be some definition
of what that stack is before you know which communities to talk to.

> Just as the Data Portability group pissed off a lot of people by
> saying that it would represent their technologies, I'm afraid that if
> we unilaterally decide that OpenID will be this brand without first
> spending time talking and working with others that the same will
> occur.  It isn't just the OpenID community or Foundation to decide
> that we want OpenID to be this brand, but a collective decision
> between our community and a few others.

Well, I am active for quite some while now in the DataPortability
Project but never thought that I am representing other group's
technology in the sense that I speak for these groups. My idea of this
whole thing was more to have a discussion of a) what the problems are
we are trying to solve and b) what technology can be used for this.
But the whole discussion around this point shows that you have to be
very careful. So I agree.

But one thing became clear nevertheless: Writing a Best Practices
document is not really working. I also think it's not even working for
such a complex matter if all communities really come together. In the
end IMHO the market will decide. It will be the vendors who implement
things and will figure out what works best for them. So what we can do
is provide them with good tools and good reasons to implement with
interoperable technologies. Moreover of course we can tell users why
open technologies are good and why they should demand this from their
vendors.

For OpenID it IMHO means that the foundation should concentrate on
OpenID and do their best to market this brand, do UX research, define
best practices on how to use OpenID, help to create easy to use
libraries etc.

As for the brand question I don't think it should be compared to SMTP
or HTTP but maybe more to something like E-Mail. If you ask a user to
enter his or her email address then it's clear to them what to enter.
The same IMHO should be true if you ask them for their OpenID.

(btw, I also wrote a little piece on OpenID Branding here:
http://mrtopf.de/blog/web20/the-openid-branding-problem/)

> If taken lightly, we will fail.

+1

-- Christian


>
> --David
>
> On Dec 13, 2008, at 1:25 PM, Pat Cappelaere wrote:
>
>> I actually was hoping that more candidates would articulate their
>> positions on that matter :(
>> Raising a question is not quite sufficient.
>> Sorry :(
>> But I would like to thank Tom for declaring his position.
>> Pat.
>>
>>
>> On Dec 13, 2008, at 5:31 AM, David Recordon wrote:
>>
>>> And this is the million dollar question! :)
>>>
>>> Should OpenID become the brand of the overall Open Stack or be a
>>> piece of technology that makes up a new brand.
>>>
>>> On Dec 13, 2008, at 3:06 AM, Pat Cappelaere wrote:
>>>
>>>> The question was about the branding position of the new board.
>>>> I am not sure that the OIDF could take over that Open Stack and
>>>> brand
>>>> it... Or this is what you are advocating?
>>>> Thanks,
>>>> Pat.
>>>>
>>>> On Dec 12, 2008, at 9:06 PM, Allen Tom wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hi Pat,
>>>>>
>>>>> Is this question about branding, or a question about the underlying
>>>>> protocols and technologies?
>>>>>
>>>>> As far as branding is concerned, my personal belief is that there
>>>>> should be a single Open Stack Brand that includes OpenID, OAuth,
>>>>> XRD, Portable Contacts, XMPP, and other complimentary protocols.
>>>>> Most of the news articles that I've seen about Facebook Connect
>>>>> refer to OpenID as the open alternative to Connect, but OpenID as a
>>>>> technology is just a small component of the stack that is needed to
>>>>> mimic Connect. Given that OpenID is already perceived to be the
>>>>> Open
>>>>> Stack, it might make sense to just group them all into one brand
>>>>> under OpenID name.
>>>>>
>>>>> Speaking as an engineer, in my opinion, it's far more important to
>>>>> actually build and deploy an integrated solution than it is to
>>>>> worry
>>>>> about branding. That being said, a solution called OpenID/OAuth/
>>>>> XRD/
>>>>> PoCo/XMPP/XFN/hCard deserves a catchy name.
>>>>>
>>>>> Allen
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Pat Cappelaere wrote:
>>>>>> I would really like to hear from the candidates about OpenID
>>>>>> branding  and their position on possible brand extension with
>>>>>> OAuth.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> What is their brand definition for OpenID and whether or not OAuth
>>>>>> would be a natural extension?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I really like the discussion that started with Eran and Johannes.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Pat.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> general mailing list
>>>> general at openid.net
>>>> http://openid.net/mailman/listinfo/general
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>
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>



-- 
Christian Scholz
Tao Takashi (Second Life name)
taotakashi at gmail.com
Blog/Podcast: http://mrtopf.de/blog

Company: http://comlounge.net
Tech Video Blog: http://comlounge.tv
IRC: MrTopf/Tao_T



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