[OpenID] Wiki page: Attempting to document the "Email Address as OpenId"debate.

Martin Atkins mart at degeneration.co.uk
Mon Feb 12 19:18:45 UTC 2007


Hallam-Baker, Phillip wrote:
> 
> Over time everyone will own their own DNS domain
 > and it will form the hub of their personal
 > communications system. All communication modes
 > will map onto the single unified communication identifier.
> 

I don't necessarily disagree with many of your arguments, but I wonder 
why — if everyone owns their own DNS domain — we even need the user@ 
portion anymore? Largely that was included because in the early days — 
and even today, for many people — their addresses were 
theirname at theirprovider.domain.

My primary personal email address (not the one I use for mailing lists) 
is pretty redundant since the part before the @ is the same as the part 
after the @ once the parent domain has been excluded. Leaving off the 
user@ portion doesn't make the address any less "mine".

 > An 'email' address is simply the conventional conjunction of a
 > username portion and a DNS name portion. It need not be used only
 > for email, nor is it. It is routine for people to use RFC822
 > addresses for Jabber and other instant messaging applications.

Calling a Jabber ID an email address is a bit misleading. It's entirely 
possible for the email address user at example.com and the JID 
user at example.com to be owned/controlled by different people. It is not 
safe to assume that the two are the same person without evidence of 
that. What makes a string like "user at example.com" an email address is 
the fact that you can address email to it. The fact that the two 
addressing schemes use similar syntax doesn't help you much.










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