[OpenID] Press Release

Thu Feb 7 17:47:53 UTC 2008

I'm a lone voice in realty *for* Openid adoption - because I saw reality in its design claims to be fundamentally de-centralized in its _operational_ web-management model, unlike the Liberty websso protocols. This property is required, if a web-scale technology is to get adopted in the mostly de-centralized organized US realty culture. 

The dominant news-reported statement so far is.. OpenID Foundation declares war on proprietary extensions to openid, and that's what the new board members joined to accomplish.  http://www.news.com/8301-13577_3-9866802-36.html?tag=nefd.top

That war is likely to undermine the very argument about openid philosophy that I'd been using to get adoption traction - that organized, backroom realty could keep its necessary private-namespace handling while staying "in keeping" with openid community's de-centralized management values (if not actually "extolling" its values.)

________________________________

From: Dick Hardt [mailto:dick at sxip.com]
Sent: Thu 2/7/2008 8:59 AM
To: Peter Williams
Cc: Bill Washburn; OpenID List
Subject: Re: [OpenID] Press Release

I don't intend to be rude Peter, but I'm not going to read this 
email. If you want to take the time to write a concise response, I 
will take the time to read it.

-- Dick

On 7-Feb-08, at 8:56 AM, Peter Williams wrote:

> That's fine, if life turns out that way. But lets see: I've seen 
> many a standards committee try to rig  a particular view of 
> operational culture through compliance rules, and domineering 
> spinware. The foundation looks overly tech-heavy. It may need some 
> independents - folks who can turn the conscience of corporate 
> culture but not become obstructionist to a tech-lead initiative 
> (and I've seen lots of obstructionist independents, too!)
>
> US Realty has ~1000 namespaces, whose fields address largely the 
> same housing features, in each market. All attempts in the (NAR) 
> trade association - a group with about a million members and large 
> sums to lobby Congress with - to get buyin to "standard names" has 
> largely failed - mostly because local communities see great 
> (cultural) value in their local choice of name or additional 
> selling feature (of your property) that has great relevance in one 
> area - when marketing "island" properties - but has no relevance in 
> others  - when marketing a condo in a downtown building complex. 
> Unlike Google (which markets names globally), realtors typically 
> market only in a 5mile radius area. The pricing and marketing 
> dynamics in that area may be quite different to the area with the 
> same house plans that is just "up the hill"... Thus local names 
> have a propensity to stick around and are often, in fact, a way of 
> distinguishing a particular real estate investment culture and its 
> the realty sub-markets that a commercial property investor, say, 
> creates.
>
> Are these namespaces proprietary? Well in as sense they are (not 
> that they have any direct value). They are the work product and 
> practices design of the 500 Realtors who make up city X, in State 
> Y. Usually, the namespace has sub-name spaces - the terms of art 
> used by the 10 realtors who are specializing in the _future_ 
> commercial property in that new shopping zone the city government 
> is thinking about issuing a bond for, where the old steel mill used 
> to be.... The field will probably be called BondX= with sub-values 
> that are an enumation (zone A, zone B ,zone C) which mean 
> absolutely nothing of course to the rest of the world outside that 
> 5 mile area and that city's financing budgets, but which imply 
> property valuation and investment potential - that obviously 
> affects current and futures pricing.
>
> Now, we have all those names, and their mappings onto standard 
> names. We have the names the magazine publishers use (e.g. Google 
> listing snippets posted off up into GoogleBase, amongst 10,000 
> others places) And, at this point its trivial to map some of the 
> fields into yet more "standard names" defined in openid AX. But, 
> when the realtor wants the local name for the same thing, I have to 
> be able to deliver it. Otherwise your 50+ year old grandmother who 
> has sold houses for 20 years will be very upset with me. At least 
> 500,000 grandmothers make up NAR and they often apply a collective 
> lobbying voice that makes Congressmen tremble. Woebetide the IT 
> person that decides to change a screen layout... or the name or 
> order of presentation of bath# vs bathroom-permits#!
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: Dick Hardt [mailto:dick at sxip.com]
> Sent: Thu 2/7/2008 8:13 AM
> To: Peter Williams
> Cc: Bill Washburn; OpenID List
> Subject: Re: [OpenID] Press Release
>
>
>
> Peter
>
> I would imagine the intent of the phrase is to keep the core of
> OpenID from becoming proprietary.
>
> I would encourage you to define new properties in your own namespace
> for your sub-community. If there is a reason why they need to be
> proprietary -- ie you want to control who can use them, I don't see
> that as evil. I would expect that many of the new properties would be
> of interest to all members in the sub-community.
>
> The OpenID Foundation does not determine the protocol. The protocol
> is determined by the community. Extensions and enhancements are
> determined by the community. Anyone of course can write their own
> extensions, and they can be proprietary. They just won't be able to
> be called part of OpenID if they are not approved according to the
> OpenID Intellectual Property Process.
>
>         http://openid.net/ipr/OpenID_Process_Document_
> (Final_Clean_20071221).pdf
>
> -- Dick
>
> On 7-Feb-08, at 7:52 AM, Peter Williams wrote:
>
>> What does this mean?
>>
>> "OpenID was always intended to be a decentralized sign-on system,
>> so it's fantastic to join a foundation committed to keeping it free
>> and unencumbered by proprietary extensions."
>>
>> If I want for my sub-community to define my own namespace in the AX
>> protocol (as the technology allows), am I an evil "proprietary
>> extension maker"?
>>
>> If I want to define my own tags for use the the extensible XRD, am
>> I an evil...
>>
>> Can only the OpenID Foundation use all those extension points in
>> the protocol?
>>
>> Unlike SSL (which allows for privately defined extensions), and
>> unlike X.509 (which allows for privately defined extensions), in
>> OpenID culture will there be can be allowance for privately defined
>> extensions?
>>
>> I think we need an explicit mechanism for denoting which extensions
>> are privately-defined (and which therefore have community blessing
>> for their creation and use in the defined sub-community).
>>
>> ________________________________
>>
>> From: general-bounces at openid.net on behalf of Bill Washburn
>> Sent: Thu 2/7/2008 7:26 AM
>> To: OpenID List
>> Subject: [OpenID] Press Release
>>
>>
>> FYI...
>>
>> http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=818650
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> SOURCE: OpenID Foundation
>>
>>  <http://openid.net/foundation>
>> Feb 07, 2008 09:00 ET
>>
>> Technology Leaders Join OpenID Foundation to Promote Open Identity
>> Management on the Web
>>
>>
>> OpenID Foundation to Support Internet User Single Sign-On Technology
>>
>>
>> CORVALLIS, OR--(Marketwire - February 7, 2008) - The OpenID
>> Foundation <http://openid.net/foundation>  today announced that
>> Google (NASDAQ: GOOG <http://www.marketwire.com/mw/stock.jsp?
>> Ticker=GOOG> ), IBM (NYSE: IBM <http://www.ibm.com/investor/> ),
>> Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT <http://www.marketwire.com/mw/stock.jsp?
>> Ticker=MSFT> ), VeriSign (NASDAQ: VRSN <http://www.marketwire.com/
>> mw/stock.jsp?Ticker=VRSN> ) and Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO <http://
>> www.marketwire.com/mw/stock.jsp?Ticker=YHOO> ) have joined as its
>> first corporate board members.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> general mailing list
>> general at openid.net
>> http://openid.net/mailman/listinfo/general
>>
>>
>
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