Proposal for Modularizing Auth 2.0 Discovery

[Martin Atkins]

Gabe Wachob wrote:
> 
> Basically, the Discovery Spec would specify that for any identifier scheme
> to work with OpenID, it MUST define a way of being constructed into an HTTP
> URI and then returning a XRDS with an HTTP GET on that HTTP URI. If there
> are other ways of resolving it, then implementations MAY use those other
> methods of resolution ("native resolution", if you will). In essence, this
> is a requirement for HTTP gateway(s) to whatever resolution infrastructure
> exists today. 
> 

I don't really think it's necessary to *mandate* that a HTTP mapping 
always be used. After all, it's very easy for a spec to, if it's 
appropriate, define a mapping to an HTTP URL and then reference the 
HTTP-based discovery spec.

While I agree that at this point any discovery protocol that *doesn't* 
use HTTP is going to face an uphill struggle as far as real-world 
implementations go, if people want to go ahead and try to get their 
off-the-wall protocols adopted I don't see any reason why we shouldn't 
let them.