[OpenID] XRI TC - An Outsiders perspective

[Peter Williams]

"Whenever a new technology is released people react in one of two ways.
1) Awesome! This is so simple. How come we never thought of this?
2) Jeez! This is so complicated! Do I need this?

My hope was that we would get (1) as a reaction when XRD is released. After
all the very reason for adopting XRD vis a vis XRDS was that XRD was going
to be simple. But that is not the impression you will get after reading what
is going on there. Looks like we are headed for (2) as the reaction from
folks when this is released. Looks to me this is going to be more
complicated than XRDS!"

I not not sure what new technology folks think is being released. I have not seen anything in openid or XRI in 3 years that is not >17 years old - except that today's twist is that makes it NOW viable and tuned for today's expectations. Who cares about stuff from 17 years ago (except when the patent claims need invalidating).

Anything produced by OASIS will tend to be complicated in its spec: its why it exists .. to do engineered solutions.



OASIS methods contrast with W3C design approaches -- which use science rather than engineering methods. The nature of science is that it inherently leaves lots of open questions, allowing the space needed solving crypto-political issues facing non-computers. It thus tends to be good for highly-scalable, civilian systems. The nature of engineering is that it necessarily must be complete, and thus its long and tedious to read. It tends to be good for military/safety systems.

Id love OpenID to continue being what it is: itself - neither W3C nor OASIS dominated. So far, David and co have done a good job on that - which speaks to their political savvy. There is no point being in the middle of a W3C/OASIS (science vs engineering) culture war. Neither W3C nor OASIS are particularly user-centric design cultures (despite all their marketing to the contrary). Openid set out to be user centric, and  found synergy with the best UCI bits of OASIS (XRI/XRD) with the best UCI bits of W3C (URLs). Despite the many pressures of crypto/corporate/standards politics, its retained its own identity.