[OpenID] Recycling OpenIDs (Was: What's broken in OpenID 2.0? (IIW session))

[Stuart Bishop]

Drummond Reed wrote:

> Martin: your concerns are well stated. Let me add some perspective from the
> "XRI side" (for those new to the list, I'm co-chair along with Gabe Wachob
> of the OASIS XRI TC, and also a board member of the OpenID Foundation, so I
> care very much about the interrelationship of the two technologies).
> 
> First, I agree that recent discussions of all the things XRI architecture
> "could do" haven't helped clarify what problems it can and can't help OpenID
> with today. From my perspective, here's what XRI 2.0 can do for OpenID 2.0
> today:

My primary concern is not so much the technical side of what XRI is capable
of, but what niche it fills and what value it adds for my users? From my
perspective, it seems that XRI support would detract value:

 - Only a tiny minority of our users will own or want to own a name. Domain
   names are cheaper and gives them more value since they can then host web
   pages and email addresses on 'their' domain rather which they see as
   an improvement over hotmail, geocities, gmail et. al. And only a
   minority of users have their own domain names, so what hope has XRI of
   becoming pervasive?

 - Supporting this minority, even if the OpenID libraries do all the
   technical work for me, still involves complicating documentation, faqs
   and login screens which detracts usability from the vast majority of our
   users.

OpenID 1.1 with directed identity fulfils all of our existing use cases. If
OpenID 2.0 comes out and detracts from our user experience, even if it just
involves making our login screen more verbose, I would have a hard time
selling the upgrade to our UI guys or the bean counters even if I wanted to.
If, as a *user* of the libraries, it is all under the hood and just adds
more power, great.

-- 
Stuart Bishop <stuart at stuartbishop.net>
http://www.stuartbishop.net/

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