[OpenID] is openid 2.0 a lightweight identity system?

Johannes Ernst jernst+openid.net at netmesh.us
Thu Feb 8 22:15:59 PST 2007


This is a misunderstanding. XRDS is crucial if OpenID ever wants to  
grow beyond authentication, because it captures the meta-data that's  
needed to say which service types are available and where for a given  
identifier (aka OpenID URL).

We had the same kind of capability in LID for the same purpose, but  
used name-value pairs for it, and that's what the first Yadis  
proposal suggested when Brad and I stuck our heads together how to  
make OpenID 1.0 and LID interoperate. The XRI folks saw it and said  
they had a better format -- XRDS -- that was much more extensible and  
useful, and I agree.

So, again, whether you like XRI / i-names etc. or not, that does not  
affect at all whether XRDS should or shouldn't have a role. In my  
view, the complexity of the OpenID Auth 2.0 spec drafts (the topic of  
this thread) has very little to do with XRDS.

On Feb 8, 2007, at 18:11, James A. Donald wrote:

>      --
> Simon Willison wrote:
>> XRDS is tricky as well. OpenID's link-rel tags are
>> simple to understand and trivial to implement,
>> sticking to the classic HTML tradition of view-source.
>> XRDS requires accept: headers and XML parsing and, as
>> Rob mentioned, a 74 page spec. What do we get in
>> exchange for that added complexity?
>
> There is much to be said in favor of XML parsing and
> RDF, but by my understanding, what we get for XRDS is
> XRI - seems to me that XRDS is part of XRI support -
> indeed a great pile of stuff is there for XRI support.
> Of course my understanding of this large and complex
> spec is quite superficial, but that is my impression.
>
> It seems to me that much of the complexity in OpenID is
> complexity that could live in XRI servers, not in OPs or
> RPs - that XRI could be changed to accommodate OpenID,
> rather OpenID changed to accommodate XRI
>
>      --digsig
>           James A. Donald
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