Re: OpenID & LID in a passel-world

On 7/24/05, Rob Lanphier <robla <at> robla.net> wrote:
> On Sat, 2005-07-23 at 23:32 -0400, Xageroth Sekarius wrote:
> > There will never be (nor should there ever be) one identity system to
> > rule them all.
> > OpenID and LID will remain relevant so long as they remain the best at
> > their respective approaches to identity. Same goes for Passel.
> >
> > Just my humble opinion. I think dreams of an identity system
> > dominating the world should have died with Passport.
> 
> <by that line of logic>
> There will never be (nor should there ever be) one information delivery
> protocol to rule them all.
> 
> gopher and wais will remain relevant so long as they remain the best at
> their respective approaches to information delivery.  Same goes for
> HTTP.
> </by that line of logic>

I agree with that line of logic (despite your implied cynicism?). FTP
and SMTP and a few others (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_layer ) you know of would
agree as well.

> 
> Sometimes, a technology "wins" by most metrics.  Just because it hasn't
> happened yet for identity systems, doesn't mean that it won't.  Some
> systems, like Passport, were doomed to fail for obvious reasons we don't
> need to rehash here.  However, just because there have been failures in
> the past, doesn't mean someone won't stumble on a killer combination
> that solves the problem well enough for a huge class of problems to
> relegate the other techniques to obscurity.
> 
> Rob
> 
> 
> 

The reasons for Passports failure are only obvious by hindsight. The
same will be said for the pro's and con's rap sheet of the next batch
of identity systems. I'll concede it's possible someone could stumble
upon a "killer combination", sure, but so long as that solution is
easily made interoperable with different solution perspectives nobody
will be locked into a failing system when hindsight begins to kick in.

Browser plug-ins (like URL-based identity) are only attractive to a
particular crowd. Just playing devils advocate because <by my line of
logic>more options are better</by my line of logic>

--

-- 
Xageroth Sekarius
[ http://digitalmyth.net/ ]:[ http://xageroth.blogspot.com/ ]