[OpenID] Interop (was: RE: Conformance and Interop...)

[Fen Labalme]

Martin Paljak wrote:
> On 07.06.2007, at 7:53, Peter Williams wrote:
> 
>> - the whole xri thing reeks of the neustar vision of view of the  
>> world (appropriately arranged for, well, the neustar business  
>> [name<->num, please pay for portability] model)
> I don't believe in anything that you HAVE to pay for.

Don't give up on XRI - it's (IMO) a superior identity standard for user
centric services.

There's a place for a globally routed, closed (well, payment required)
namespace and some services may require it.  Neustar has helped move the XRI
standard forward, and I thank them for that.

However, the XRI spec does not empower any particular 'global' namespace, and
therefore conceivably communities could create their own "global" namespaces
that resolve locally rather than sending all names out to e.g. the
http://xri.net proxy for resolution.  While these names may not be globally
unique and inter-community standards for namespace management (aka peering)
have not yet been developed, there's a straight-forward and time-tested path
to managing namespace collisions.  The results provide all the power and
flexibility of XRI/i-names while creating a somewhat subversive framework for
user centric digital identity.  Further, peering arrangements between closed
community "super-nodes" will provide an ideal environment for the development
of the most important service when people truly control their identity:
reputation.

Bottom line: what's important to me is not that I have global name ("=fen")
that people I'll never know in some_remote_location can use to address me.
Rather, what I want is the people in the communities I am part of to be able
to refer to "fen" and know they're talking about the same person.  Names just
make more sense in a local context.

=Fen

-- 
http://xri.net/=Fen.Labalme