Exactly. As I've been out around the world talking to everyone I can about OpenID (specifically folks outside of the identity community) I hear this all the time.<div><br></div><div>We fail the "make it easy" test in spades and I'm endeavoring to tackle that issue.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Heraldry is a perfect way to further confuse people who are only NOW getting acquainted with OpenID. As the resident branding guy (for lack of a better term), I can tell you that we don't need MORE brands to deal with (PoCo, Diso, OAuth, OpenID, XRDS, XRD, XRI, OpenSocial, ad nauseam).</div>
<div><br></div><div>Furthermore, the only reason that we don't have the OpenID project on Google Code is because Google reserved all the project names that were first on Sourceforge.net. As the SF project is pretty much dead, (like Heraldry) the reason to NOT have our space carved out on Google Code seems to have evaporated — but policies are policies.</div>
<div><br></div><div>I'm not saying that starting up <a href="http://openid.googlecode.com">openid.googlecode.com</a> is going to solve the dearth of good OpenID libraries problems, but I am saying that I can commit to doing what I've done before and help to grow interest and attention in a community space dedicated to the improvement of the OpenID libraries. And since the project is centered on OpenID libraries, I think it should bear that name, even if we don't endorse one implementation over another.</div>
<div><br></div><div>I think Jonathan has expressed one the problems that we must address as a community — and my proposal is my first effort to that end.</div><div><br></div><div>Chris<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 12:21 PM, David Recordon <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:david@sixapart.com">david@sixapart.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><div style="word-wrap:break-word">Thanks for chiming in Jonathan! It's great to have you share your experiences directly here versus my only being able to share stories like your own I've been hearing the past six months.<div>
<br></div><div>Thanks,</div><div>--David</div><div><div></div><div class="h5"><div><br><div><div>On Jun 1, 2009, at 12:13 PM, Jonathan Coffman wrote:</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div> <font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:11pt">I’ll chime in as a business owner who is fluent in some of the technical issues around OpenID and I’ll say that in our experience, finding the various libraries has been more laborious than we had anticipated. <br>
<br> Ie — it took a lot of time for my developers to track down what the ‘most recently updated’ library for given technologies were and having information like that presented in a uniform or centralized manner would be wonderful.<br>
<br> -Jonathan<br> <br> <br> On 6/1/09 3:00 PM, "David Recordon" <<a href="http://david@sixapart.com" target="_blank">david@sixapart.com</a>> wrote:<br> <br> </span></font><blockquote type="cite"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:11pt">So far Chris made the proposal and I've expressed support for it. Given that no other board members have participated in the discussion, I'm guessing that most board memebers don't have strong opinions on the matter. We could either:<br>
1) try to encourage additional discussion among board members and the community<br> 2) accept this as a valid motion and have Don schedule an electronic vote<br> 3) discuss this on our executive committee call next week and make a decision there<br>
<br> Don, can you please help move this discussion/decision forward?<br> <br> Thanks,<br> --David<br> <br> On Jun 1, 2009, at 11:55 AM, DeWitt Clinton wrote:<br> <br> </span></font><blockquote type="cite"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:11pt">Can we at least decide one way or the other whether I can open the <a href="http://openid.googlecode.com" target="_blank">openid.googlecode.com</a> <<a href="http://openid.googlecode.com" target="_blank">http://openid.googlecode.com</a>> project up to Chris and others representing the OIDF?<br>
<br> -DeWitt<br> <br> On Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 11:47 AM, David Recordon <<a href="http://david@sixapart.com" target="_blank">david@sixapart.com</a>> wrote:<br> </span></font><blockquote type="cite"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:11pt"> <br>
No, Heraldry failed because the two companies responsible for the majority of OpenID implementations at the time didn't want to work within the ASF's process. This is one of the reasons why community based open source development is important beyond just corporate backed development.<br>
<br> I think Chris' proposal is sound, he has buy in from various library contributors, we have a way to let people like Mart continue developing on GitHub, and I'm not seeing a concrete alternative proposal with someone willing to lead it and make it happen like Chris is. So I'm sorry, but can we please move forward?<br>
<br> <br> If we believe that the best path forward is for Chris to first make <a href="http://openid.net/code" target="_blank">http://openid.net/code</a> then lets do that, but I agree with him that an OpenID Google Code project is a demonstrable piece of forward momentum. The wider developer community has expressed many times over that OpenID's libraries are not of the quality that they need to be and it is the Foundation's job to help fix that.<br>
<br> <br> --David<br> <br> On Jun 1, 2009, at 8:38 AM, Johannes Ernst wrote:<br> <br> </span></font><blockquote type="cite"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:11pt"> <br> </span></font><blockquote type="cite"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:11pt">On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 10:00 PM, Johannes Ernst <<a href="http://jernst@netmesh.us" target="_blank">jernst@netmesh.us</a>> wrote:<br>
</span></font><blockquote type="cite"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:11pt"> <br> We had this discussion before and it lead to the Apache incubator named Heraldry. Admittedly that one failed, but I don't think it was because of the name ;-)<br>
</span></font></blockquote><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:11pt"> <br> If it wasn't the name, can you describe why it failed. I've heard of Heraldry, but am not familiar with its structure or fate.<br> </span></font></blockquote>
<font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:11pt"><br> The idea was to incubate within the Apache Software Foundation an open-source project developing OpenID-related functionality. Libraries were donated into it, and an entire OpenID provider was donated into it. There was broad support from all parts of the OpenID community. We figured being associated with the ASF would not be a bad idea, and the Apache license sounded good, too.<br>
<br> <br> The incubation process failed because basically nobody "did anything" in terms of writing code.<br> <br> </span></font><blockquote type="cite"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:11pt">I am curious how you think that the foundation should best go about creating or facilitating the creation of the circumstances that would lead to world-class open source OpenID libraries being developed.<br>
<br> <br> I haven't heard alternative proposals, but I have received some negative feedback towards my proposals, and yet the libraries are still not writing themselves.<br> </span></font></blockquote><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:11pt"><br>
Well, from what I can see the openid4java project has some traction. It is my understanding that code from that project has been incorporated into some large-scale commercial offerings. It's a small community but it is active and has been for a while. So they are doing something right. Perhaps one could attempt to broaden that project beyond Java?<br>
<br> <br> I think a similar question needs to be asked about commercial/proprietary implementations. There aren't a whole lot of those either. I would stipulate that it is for the same reason.<br> <br> <br> Now stop me because I'm about the speculate why that is. ;-) But that wasn't your question.<br>
<br> Cheers,<br> <br> <br> <br> Johannes.<br> <br> <br> _______________________________________________<br> board mailing list<br> <a href="http://board@openid.net" target="_blank">board@openid.net</a><br> <a href="http://openid.net/mailman/listinfo/board" target="_blank">http://openid.net/mailman/listinfo/board</a><br>
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<br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Chris Messina<br>Open Web Advocate<br><br>Website: <a href="http://factoryjoe.com">http://factoryjoe.com</a><br>Blog: <a href="http://factoryjoe.com/blog">http://factoryjoe.com/blog</a><br>
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