Sam Ruby provides complete introduction to OpenID. I wrote about it on last day of the last year, when I started using my blog as my identity. But Sam has given further illustrations of hosting the identity on your own server without much effort, and explains why not to do it.
The real downside [of using another server] is privacy. It gives somebody else partial information about a portion of your online habits. And much of the information that they don’t have is readily discoverable.
There is also control issues. After all, what good is a decentralized identity system where your only real choice is to delegate to a centralized server that you don’t control?
Also, Emre Sokullu compares OpenID with the identity systems of vendors like Yahoo, Google and Microsoft. He asks some questions, about true decentralisation, which probably can be answered by what Sam has demonstrated.
I think OpenID is the best solution from the perpsective of the user, like me. If it is against the business models of proprietary sign-ons, they should at least let me map my proprietary accounts to the OpenID account. Like I had mentioned earlier, OpenID has still not caught up, I guess it is one of the concepts that do not come attached with business models. I hope it catches up because it is really convenient for the user.
January 5th, 2007 at 10:54 am
Hi Abhijit, I think meta linking to your openid provider or hosting your own openid server is not an answer to my question. It’s too geekish, this space is always vulnerable to be dominated by one company - just like FeedBurner dominated RSS serving space. The real question is “is this really a problem?”.. Well, for me no, but I’m sure the answer will be yes for some.
January 5th, 2007 at 11:17 am
Emre, thanks for your comment. Yes, I agree that the way it is done is geekish today, but it does allow decentralisation conceptually. There can be tools in the future that can automate a lot of it, like it has happened with feeds.
I do not think that domination of FeedBurner is harmful in any way. We can still have our own feed server, FeedBurner has only made it convenient boosting the use of feeds. If OpenID providers do it, it will only help its promotion. This domination, which does not impose, is preferable according to me. But in case I do have problems like privacy with other providers, I can choose to host my own OpenID server.