Archive for February, 2006

OpenID

Tuesday, February 28th, 2006

Have you heard about “OpenID”:http://openid.net/ ? I stumbled across it by accident but I get the inkling you will be hearing/seeing/reading more about it in the future.

OpenID is a distributed single sign on system. It’s to open source, as the “Passport” system is to Microsoft.

From a user perspective it works like so:

* You go to your point of authorization and login as you probably normally would (user/pass).
* You surf the web and comment on blogs by passing your ID, which is actually a URL, with your comment.

Pretty easy hey? Yeh, but here’s what may happen _in the background_ after you submit your comment.

# Server receives comment and ID.
# Server goes to URL (that is the ID).
# Server parses the head of the URL to find a link tag with attribute of rel=”openid.server” and a href attribute.
# Server forwards you to the href it just found which is your agency.
# Agency determines whether you are you. E.g. asking for user/pass, or verifying a previous cookie it set.
# Agency forwards you back to Server with yes/no response.
# Server accepts/rejects comment.

OK, not so simple. Fortunately there’s a stack of libraries that already handle this stuff for you. Huzah for open source.

There’s a bit more to the process so check out the “OpenID”:http://openid.net/ web site for further details.

The system actually has heaps going for it when you digest it. Any existing user/pass authenticated system can provide the user with an OpenID. Therefore the system does not face a chicken and egg problem, “merely” an adoption issue. OpenID was started by LiveJournal and they have “some”:http://www.lifewiki.net/openid/OpenIDServers “others”:http://www.lifewiki.net/openid/OpenIDConsumers following.

If we continue down this road, the Internet will change considerably.

Watch out, the world as you know it is changing.

100 Posts

Tuesday, February 28th, 2006

From Fantasy To Reality

Tuesday, February 28th, 2006