[OpenID] experimental namespace for openid.net

Dirk Balfanz balfanz at google.com
Mon Jul 13 17:10:46 UTC 2009 

Hi guys,
somehow I only get sporadic messages from this mailing list (I'll have to
dig through my spam settings, etc, to find out what's going on there), so I
read the various responses on the web archives. Let me try to respond to
them:

- XMLDSIG vs. other kinds of signatures: This is exactly the kind of
discussion going on at the XRI TC right now. There are those on the TC that
think xmldsig with constrained c14n will work, and those that think that
this is still too complicated. You're welcome to join the TC and participate
in the discussion.

- Google "gatewaying" users through itself (by hosting host-meta files for
domains at Google): we have no intention of gatewaying users through Google.
When a domain hosts its own host-meta, the discovery will of course just
work. We simply asked ourselves the question: How can we give all our Google
Apps users an OpenID with the least amount of work required on the part of
the Google Apps domain admins? Domains should host their own host-meta. If
they don't (and many won't), RPs should find a way to still perform
discovery for that user. Trying Google _first_, and then the domain, will in
the vast majority of cases result in lower latency from
user-supplied-identifier to discovery information than the other way 'round.
But RPs can do whatever they want. They could, for example, try both in
parallel and go with whatever host-meta comes back first (be that from
Google, from another hosting provider, or from the actual domain).

- Having said all that, what I was trying to figure out in this thread was
that assuming that a provider wants to launch a proof-of-concept
implementation of a feature that I think we all agree is needed in OpenID
(in this case, better discovery), what namespace should the provider use for
the various pieces in the protocol that haven't officially been approved
yet. The responses that actually tried to address that question seemed to
think that http://experimental.openid.net was a good idea, but that some
sort of process might be needed to hand out chunks of that namespace. I
assume that that process should make sure that the provider in question is
making a good-faith effort to actually contribute to the OpenID community
during the further development of the feature in question, as opposed to
grabbing just a chunk of semi-official-sounding namespace? I'm a wee bit
concerned that the processes that people want to see in place for this might
take a bit of time to establish (feel free to prove me wrong by setting up a
registry, etc!), so I'm wondering whether in this case we could follow the
spirit of the yet-to-be-established process (assuming I captured it
correctly), as opposed to the letter (which doesn't exist yet), and just
agree that it is ok for us, in this case, to use that namespace.

Cheers,

Dirk.


On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 5:13 PM, Breno de Medeiros <breno at google.com> wrote:

> A charter proposal for the WG already exists.
>
> On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 4:49 PM, David Recordon<david at sixapart.com> wrote:
> > Should this experimental namespace only apply to work being done by
> OpenID
> > working groups?  I'm very supportive of pushing the standards forward via
> > prototypes, but that should be done as part of the OpenID community
> instead
> > of by a single company.
> >
> > I'd be very happy to help get a discovery working group spun up and
> charter
> > them to modernize OpenID 2.0's discovery process.
> >
> > --David
> >
> > On Jul 10, 2009, at 11:58 AM, George Fletcher wrote:
> >
> >> +1 to http://experimental.openid.net
> >>
> >> It would be good to add this to the "repository" work Breno and John are
> >> doing as having a registry for experimental URIs would be good as well.
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >> George
> >>
> >> Dirk Balfanz wrote:
> >>>
> >>> [+general at openid.net <mailto:general at openid.net> for a broader
> audience]
> >>>
> >>> On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 4:45 PM, Dirk Balfanz <balfanz at google.com
> >>> <mailto:balfanz at google.com>> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>   Hi guys,
> >>>   Google would like to launch a feature in which we're allowing our
> >>>   Google Apps hosted domains to become OpenID providers. The
> >>>   authentication part of it is pretty simple - Google is already
> >>>   logging in users to their apps, so we can also host an OP endpoint
> >>>   for those domains and send assertions back to Relying Parties.
> >>>   What is more difficult is the discovery part. We have been working
> >>>   with the XRI TC to define a XRD-based discovery protocol that
> >>>   would allow this kind of hosting of discovery documents on behalf
> >>>   of our customers.
> >>>   We believe that providing proof-of-concept implementations drives
> >>>   standardization processes forward, so in this spirit we want to
> >>>   launch this feature in the near future, using a discovery protocol
> >>>   that as far as we can tell meets all the requirements of what the
> >>>   XRI TC is currently converging on, but which has not been vetted
> >>>   as an official standard (it's a chicken and egg thing - without
> >>>   PoC no standards, without standards by definition no
> >>>   standards-compliant implementations).
> >>>
> >>>   While we were tossing around ideas
> >>> <http://markmail.org/message/ixc5led2lobdwij2>in the
> >>>   standardization committees we just used random identifiers for new
> >>>   XML namespaces, etc. that we would need for this discovery
> >>>   protocol. Now that we're about to launch we need to decide what to
> >>>   call these things. We would like to use a namespace
> >>>   in http://specs.openid.net/... because we want this kind of
> >>>   discovery protocol to be part of OpenID, but we can't really use
> >>>   them because we don't have a next-generation discovery protocol yet.
> >>>   So what should we use? How
> >>>   about http://experimental.openid.net/... ? That way, Relying
> >>>   Parties know that what we're trying to do is be a part of the
> >>>   OpenID community and bring the protocol forward. On the other
> >>>   hand, this would also be a signal to the RP that they're using a
> >>>   feature that has not been vetted as a standard yet.
> >>>   For example, a discovery document for a domain balfanz.net
> >>>   <http://balfanz.net> at Google might look like this (notice the
> >>>   "experimental" namespace and the XML elements using it):
> >>>
> >>>   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
> >>>   <xrds:XRDS xmlns:xrds="xri://$xrds" xmlns="xri://$xrd*($v*2.0)">
> >>>     <ds:Signature xmlns:ds="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#">
> >>>     <ds:SignedInfo>
> >>>     <ds:CanonicalizationMethod
> >>> Algorithm="
> http://docs.oasis-open.org/xri/xrd/2009/01#canonicalize-raw-octets"
> >>> />
> >>>     <ds:SignatureMethod
> >>> Algorithm="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#rsa-sha1" />
> >>>     </ds:SignedInfo>
> >>>     <ds:KeyInfo>
> >>>     <ds:X509Data>
> >>>     <ds:X509Certificate>
> >>>     MIICgjCCA...
> >>>     </ds:X509Certificate>
> >>>     <ds:X509Certificate>
> >>>     MIICsDCCAhmgAwIB...
> >>>     </ds:X509Certificate>
> >>>     </ds:X509Data>
> >>>     </ds:KeyInfo>
> >>>     </ds:Signature>
> >>>     <XRD>
> >>>     <CanonicalID>balfanz.net <http://balfanz.net></CanonicalID>
> >>>     <Service priority="0">
> >>>     <Type>http://specs.openid.net/auth/2.0/server</Type>
> >>>     <Type>http://openid.net/srv/ax/1.0</Type>
> >>>     <Type>http://specs.openid.net/extensions/pape/1.0</Type>
> >>>     <URI>https://www.google.com/a/balfanz.net/o8/ud?be=o8</URI>
> >>>     </Service>
> >>>     <Service priority="0"
> >>> xmlns:experimental="
> http://experimental.openid.net/google/2009/07/xmlns/">
> >>>     <Type>http://www.iana.org/assignments/relation/describedby</Type>
> >>>     <MediaType>application/xrds+xml</MediaType>
> >>>
> >>> <experimental:URITemplate>
> https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/user-xrds?uri={%uri}
> >>>
> >>> <https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/user-xrds?uri=%7B%uri%7D
> ></experimental:URITemplate>
> >>>     <experimental:NextAuthority>hosted-id.google.com
> >>>   <http://hosted-id.google.com></experimental:NextAuthority>
> >>>     </Service>
> >>>     </XRD>
> >>>   </xrds:XRDS>
> >>>
> >>>   What do you guys think?
> >>>
> >>>   Dirk.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> specs mailing list
> >>> specs at openid.net
> >>> http://openid.net/mailman/listinfo/specs
> >>>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >> http://openid.net/mailman/listinfo/specs
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > general mailing list
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> > http://openid.net/mailman/listinfo/general
> >
>
>
>
> --
> --Breno
>
> +1 (650) 214-1007 desk
> +1 (408) 212-0135 (Grand Central)
> MTV-41-3 : 383-A
> PST (GMT-8) / PDT(GMT-7)
>
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