[OpenID - Eu] [OpenID board] Status of the OpenID Foundation Europe

Wed Nov 25 20:00:36 UTC 2009

Hello folks.

I've been following the OpenID lists very passively for the past year. So take this as a random rant, especially because there is board election coming!

Owning one of the OpenID EU country domains (openid.ee) I should be concerned about the developments on this EU/EU-foundation/foundation front, but read on...

Other than some interesting developments in the (IMO) right direction on attribute exchange front, there has only been a few e-mails that received my attention in OpenID folder, three of them from the foundation: 1) my membership is about to expire 2) IPR process voting 3) new board election.

1) I don't plan to extend my membership - it's a $25 spent for ... nothing I perceive any real value in. Any value I give (25USD to the foundation) or any value I receive (some e-mails and strange voting rights).
2) I only voted Yes for the new IPR process because the changes made sense and it is a change for better in the limits of the existing system. But IPR system itself - does not make any sense.  I doubt that any contract or NDA-s I've had to sign in my short life make up 7.5 dense pages of text. I've not worked in any huge lawyer-centric international company either. I always choose simple ground rules instead of legalese, if possible.
3) I will cast my vote at this election, as this is what I get for my $25 :) To whoever sees and explains the "essence" of OIDF outside of US.

Out of practicality, none of the foundations (US/EÚ) have given me anything useful other than the prestige of adding "OpenID EU Foundation member" to some e-mail; nor have I had anything useful for me to give to these organizations. I guess I do have contributed to the cause of OpenID, but not in a way that would be related to any foundation.. Articles or presentations given on the "Identity platform" that also cover (and promote!) OpenID can be done and have been done independently. Any real technical developments can be done and is done informally on mailing lists. But as I said - I'm probably a really passive member of the community as well...

OpenID has been great in bringing the identity problem to the attention of general public (Intel, Microsoft, Linux, OpenID - people who know something about IT have all at least heard these names). This is great. OpenID is the lowest common denominator of the world wide identity space. There are also a lot of semi-proprietary solutions that matter as much as OpenID. Practicality beats purity. I believe that OpenID has been the catalyst in US that raised the online identity problem and also offered a solution that was different from MS Passport... 

Back to OpenID.ee and the situation in Estonia. The identity problem has been around from before that was OpenID, roughly as long as the eID card itself (2002). The authentication and identity topic has been talked about and known of. Here OpenID is just another implementation of the problem.  "There is the ID-card thing" "There is this OpenID!" "I have mobile-ID!" People know the problem, they know there are solutions and that OpenID is one of the solutions. But overall, OpenID is as relevant in the big picture as the design of an annoying popup window (don't kill me, UX designers!) - people just click on it without thinking to get to the thing you're actually interested in (Really liked the article by Johannes Ernst, http://netmesh.info/jernst/digital_identity/why-we-really-dont-need-an-identity-selector)

So being a web developer who solves identity problems on the web, I would draw a line between "Identity problem", OpenID and OIDF and web applications, Apache web server and Apache Foundation. 

Long story short - we're planning to possibly "abandon" openid.ee because our paying customers don't really care if it is OpenID or something else, we solve a problem for them, problems that don't really always relate to OpenID in their brains. We've caused more uncertainty with the openid name than we hoped (mostly explaining the differences between Google OpenID and OpenID.ee URL) We've been thinking about marketing the service as "Matilda" in the future - don't ask why. For end users, OpenID has done itself a great job of becoming a known brand.

For the foundation theory, community board and all that - why not adopt the Apache model? High-paying sponsors who get their logos on the web page and that money goes into the development of reference implementations, specs and stuff like that. But looking at the current main theme of openid.net with all the rage about "OpenID for the government", I see a relation between "Government contracts" and "big US based RP-s on OIDF board".

Not that OpenID as one solution to the problem would be a bad idea. It's really great news, encourages competition and opens up huge possibilities. 

But as a "passive community member" of both OpenID and Apache, I have a feeling that $25 get me (and the community) more results from ASF than OIDF...

I'll go and do that $25 donation to Apache now :)

(This is just a subjective POV and food for thought, notice the initial "rant" classification!)

Cheers,
Martin, Estonia

On 25.11.2009, at 19:06, Nat Sakimura wrote:

> Hi Robert, 
> 
> Any news from your side? 
> 
> =nat
> 
> On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 6:34 PM, Jean-Noël Colin <jn.colin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Henrik
> 
> I must admit I do share your concerns about openid europe; I haven't seen much activity around that foundation and was also wondering whether it would be more appropriate to have one single consolidated foundation, rather than maintaining an idle one.
> 
> Best regards
> 
> Jean-Noel Colin
> 
> On 25 Nov 2009, at 03:06, Henrik Biering wrote:
> 
> > Hi Snorri,
> > how are you doing? I have not heard anything from you for quite a long time.
> >
> > Yesterday, I discovered that the openid.dk domain registered by OpenID foundation Europe had expired and had been deactivated.
> > I have now managed to pay the invoice and get the domain reactivated.
> >
> > However, I wonder about the situation of OpenID Europe Foundation in general. You have done an impressive job of aquiring the European and National Trademarks for OpenID as well as several national OpenID domains on behalf of the EU foundation, and it would be sad to see the result of these efforts vanish.
> >
> > If there are no resources available to maintain OpenID Foundation Europe, maybe it is appropriate to consider how this IPR may be consolidated within the global OpenID Foundation (or alternatively at the national levels).
> >
> > Best Regards,
> > Henrik Biering
> > OpenID-DK representative
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > board mailing list
> > board at lists.openid.net
> > http://lists.openid.net/mailman/listinfo/openid-board
> 
> _______________________________________________
> board mailing list
> board at lists.openid.net
> http://lists.openid.net/mailman/listinfo/openid-board
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Nat Sakimura (=nat)
> http://www.sakimura.org/en/
> _______________________________________________
> eu mailing list
> eu at lists.openid.net
> http://lists.openid.net/mailman/listinfo/openid-eu

-- 
Martin Paljak
http://martin.paljak.pri.ee
+372.515.6495