[OpenID] OpenID based on email addresses... Just Works!

[Martin Atkins]

David Fuelling wrote:
> 
> That's not what I mean.  Instead, I'm talking about any particular 
> device's ability to "do something" with an OpenID URL.  For example, 
> most "devices" (be it Tivo, iPhone, Blackberry, etc) already have some 
> sort of support for a URL (I could be way off here, but I think this is 
> accurate).  My thinking is that it should be easier to allow my 
> Blackberry to support OpenID since it's just a URL, and arguably my 
> Blackberry can already "do stuff" with a URL -- it already has a library 
> that can talk HTTP to an endpoint based on the URL.  So, adding openid 
> to my blackberry is actually more "easy" (pardon my grammar) with URLs 
> -- the resolvability is of an URL is already built-in to a lot of devices. 
> 
> However, most of these devices don't natively know how to "resolve" a 
> mailto: link into a URL.    It would require extra device-native 
> software.  My point really centers around the assumption that since many 
> devices can already natively handle URL's (in the sense that they can 
> resolve them using HTTP) then OpenID should be easier to implement on 
> these devices if an OpenID is a URL.  Trying to get all these devices to 
> support a new form of "link", as it were in the form of a mailto: would 
> seem to be more difficult, if I'm thinking pragmatically.

You need additional software to support OpenID discovery whatever URL 
scheme is in play. There's more to OpenID discovery than just "fetch the 
URL". This is why we have OpenID Consumer libraries!

Even if EAUT (as it currently stands) were used, you still need some 
code to actually parse the email address and do the EAUT step.