[OpenID] A lesson from history for Facebook
Johannes Ernst
jernst+openid.net at netmesh.us
Thu Apr 16 23:10:00 UTC 2009
On Apr 16, 2009, at 11:38, Peter Williams wrote:
> ... a lot of marketing about open systems, but not a lot of actual
> __multi-vendor__ delivery
This is an excellent observation. But I think the exploding
interconnectivity that we are all seeing, all over the technology
universe, may cause a generational change here where the new patterns
are different from the old ones that were observed so many times. This
particularly applies to OpenID.
Here's my reasoning:
If all there is is a single mainframe with custom software and no
connectivity (1950's), the subject of open system does not even exist
because it would serve no useful purpose.
If you want to connect a few workstations or pieces of software, and
that's all you do, vendor-proprietary interconnect systems win because
they are cheaper to build and maintain and have less interoperability
bugs. Your customers won't like that, because they don't like the lock-
in, so they complain and you market open systems, but don't deliver or
don't deliver well. That's the situation that we are all familiar with.
But if you are a relying party on the web, and potentially >>1000's of
IdPs, and vice versa, the only thing that works is open protocols.
Your choice choice is between not interconnecting, or interconnecting
via open protocols. Anything else is simply not affordable because of
the NxM problem. (Note this argument applies from RSS, in a way the
granddaddy of open interconnect protocols on the web, to all members
of the "open stack", whichever way it will turn out to be put together
exactly.)
This is new. Prior to this generation of the web, we simply did not
have any place where >>1000's of systems built and maintained
independently by 1000's of actors needed to interconnect, and needed
to interconnect so cheaply that they better work out of the box
(because tech support is unaffordable)
The only counter-argument that I know is that if the #1 IdP had a
gigantic market share (think Windows market share) in all major
markets and was not likely to lose it over the next N years, then a
proprietary approach may win. Some people think Facebook may have or
gain that -- I beg to differ. And given that Facebook is now an active
contributor to the OpenID movement, they might agree with me on that ;-)
So I think the signs for actual multi-vendor delivery, as Peter put
it, in my view are far better at this point in time than they ever
were in the IT universe. And historical parallels are instructive, but
not decisive.
Now disagree! ;-)
Cheers,
Johannes.
Johannes Ernst
NetMesh Inc.
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