The problem with OpenID (TAKE 3) How to become Linus Torvalds

[SitG Admin]

>My view is that we should stop talking about 'identity' all together.
>We should instead define the range of problems we want to solve as use
>cases and go solve them. Identity is too much of an abstraction, it
>can stand for anything.

+1 to targeting problems rather than ideals (at that layer).

The abstraction (of identity) is this community's strength and 
weakness; it names the Purpose that brings everyone together, and it 
calls in people from all over who may be able to contribute 
something. This concentration of diverse ideas, though, doesn't 
create a single harmonious overlap of equally distributed strength; 
there are outliers, ideas that aren't shared much by others here. The 
two are opposite sides of the same coin.

To restate this in a slightly different way, it's a popularity 
contest: none of us can decide what idea will see the most adoption, 
since none of us can make those decisions for everyone else. Nearly 
any idea is probably going to be seen as a bad one by *some* person 
in the group (Santosh helps make statistics come *true*!), and we 
should each be prepared to occasionally bite the bullet and accept 
that it's *our* turn to be left out in the cold. (Then leave our 
unpopular ideas behind and come in for a warm meal and whatever work 
has got so many members of the community in the commons house.)

-Shade