[OpenID] JanRain library licensing (was: Re: On OpenID 2.0)

[Jonathan Daugherty]

# I'll close with this too - as someone who has implemented a lot of
# "open specs" in the past couple years - having multiple
# implementations in the wild is actually a very good thing... I've
# found anyway. Helps make sure we're reading and writing to the spec
# appropriately ...

It's true that having lots of people try to implement a spec is one
way to see whether it's well-written, etc.  But it's a sensitive issue
for the OpenID community because we have to manage *perception* of the
technology whose audience is *not* developers, so it does matter
whether all the fledgling implementations actually *work*.  It'd be
nicer if we didn't have to worry about users, but users are the whole
point.  And scaring them away because OpenID only works on 50% of
sites that claim to support it, or -- worse yet -- has security
problems specific to those sites is definitely something to be
concerned about, and that's a reason to advocate re-use (forgetting
programmer dogma).

I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here, but I just wanted to point
that out.

-- 
  Jonathan Daugherty
  JanRain, Inc.
  irc.freenode.net: cygnus in #openid
  cygnus.myopenid.com