[OpenID] OpenID; a single choice

[Martin Atkins]

tom wrote:
> 
> OpenID is doing a fantastic job on specifications however it is (or some 
> in the community are) hiding behind statements such as "It's all up to 
> the website." [see reply to my original post by Stephen Gigante for 
> source].  Well it is, but without the OpenID foundation setting down 
> clear guidelines we have, in this case "button anarchy" which negatively 
> affects OpenID.
> 

To be clear, the OpenID Foundation doesn't itself author specifications, 
or indeed guidelines.

The OpenID Foundation exists to provide infrastructure in which 
specification work can be carried out while ensuring that published 
specifications are compliant with the stated IPR policy, and thus that 
the completed specifications remain as open and free to implement as is 
legally possible.

If some folks would like to form an OpenID user experience, 
accessibility or other such work group to author a set of guidelines as 
you say, and if there is agreement from the community that this needs to 
be done -- which I'm sure there would be -- then that work group could 
be hosted by the Foundation, which provide a group mailing list and so 
on. The only current barrier is that the mechanism for voting in new 
work groups is still under development; the foundation board and 
committees are currently working actively on this and there should be a 
system in place shortly.

Cheers,
Martin