authenticating with XMPP ID (jabber address) [LWN.net]

authenticating with XMPP ID (jabber address)

Posted May 30, 2008 16:25 UTC (Fri) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455)
In reply to: authenticating with XMPP ID (jabber address) by jamesh
Parent article: The problem(s) with OpenID

I think that you missed this part of my reply above:

These solutions will not provide a solution for an individual who wants to setup his own openid server and wants to simply delegate failover to a friend or an ISP.

Your answers do not address this primary issue. MX records for email do. Without this, openid is not poised for global adoption and will remain something that enslaves anyone who wants to use it to the whims of large corporate openid providers. It is not a reasonable solution for someone who wants to be independent, which is really a shame. For those of us who look for the ability to be independent from a software infrastructure perspective (which I suspect many free software users do), openid brings us this hope, but unfortunately it seems to fall short of delivering this. :(

From your answers and others like you it is obvious that openid has done a good job marketing to and making life easy and profitable for the expensive high end providers, perhaps this was the single most important/valid criticism in this article. However, little thought seems to have been given to the concerns of smaller entities such as individual users who want to be their own providers.

Maybe I am just old school, I still own a land line (scoff)! Back when email was designed connectivity and availability were not taken for granted as they are today. I guess it is just hard to escape from this narrow minded point of view when the web today seems like it just works. Sadly, this point of view shows clearly in the design of many newer technologies.

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