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FUDCon report from the Fedora Project Leader (Red Hat Magazine)
Red Hat Magazine is carrying a report from FUDcon written by project leader Paul Frields. "Last night, Infrastructure team leader Mike McGrath announced a one-two punch of free software goodness for Fedora. First, our Fedora Account System is now an OpenID provider. This means that the identity you create in the Fedora Project can be used across thousands of web sites. The other big announcement was the new Fedora telephony system, 'Fedora Talk,' based on the juggernaut free software VoIP project Asterisk."
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OpenID provider vs relying party Posted Jun 24, 2008 17:18 UTC (Tue) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] This means that the identity you create in the Fedora Project can be used across thousands of web sites. ... but the identity you already have cannot be used at the Fedora Project. Setting up an OpenID _provider_ like this is very nearly useless. Fedora ought to be looking at becoming an OpenID relying party, not a provider. Let me provide an analogy. Being an OpenID provider is like setting up a credit card company. Maybe you want to do that, if you're a big financial organisation and you have all the know-how to do a good job of it, and you feel that you can offer something better (low interest rate, convenient payment, etc.) than competitors. But if you don't have the expertise then you're producing Monopoly money, everyone will stick with their VISA. But if you want to reduce how many different credit cards people carry, you don't want to set up a credit card company, you want to start accepting the most common existing credit cards. Offering your own brand of card is actually counter-productive, that's just another card everyone has to carry. Adding relying party support to Fedora's site and services would be much harder, but it wouldn't be an empty gesture like this, it would be a real achievement. There would be solid benefits for Fedora and its users. Worried about "break-ins" ? No-one can steal your user's passwords, because you don't have them, you don't even have a password hash, you just know their OpenID which is public. Concerned about integration? The use of URIs in OpenID makes it child's play to join two arbitrary account systems together, and if they need to be separated again later you can safely do that too. No more "all passwords will need to be changed, sorry" emails or "please note that now the password from site A is used on site B".
OpenID provider vs relying party Posted Jun 24, 2008 17:28 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] Being a relaying party is the next step. Patience, it is happening. There are places where it can be done and that needs to move carefully.
OpenID provider vs relying party Posted Jun 24, 2008 18:51 UTC (Tue) by mmcgrath (subscriber, #44906) [Link] > Setting up an OpenID _provider_ like this is very nearly useless. Fedora > ought to be looking at becoming an OpenID relying party, not a provider. I wouldn't say useless. People like being able to, for example, make comments on livejournal without needing an account. Lots of bloggers (including myself) use livejournal. As far as being a consumer, we're in an odd position there. We have an OpenID plugin for our wiki that we could enable right now, the problem is in our Contributor License Agreement. Without having signed it, we can't accept someone's content... basically making an account with us useless without the CLA. I'm still looking into a couple of options but without something like an agreement between our CLA and some other organization's CLA, Fedora's future as an OpenID consumer is, unfortunately, limited. We knew this was a possibility but made the changes anyway and are hoping the Legal system can catch up :)
OpenID provider vs relying party Posted Aug 2, 2008 15:47 UTC (Sat) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] [This reply is a bit late coming, sorry] OpenID doesn't forbid you from attaching some site-specific conditions to usage. I see that the CLA process requires contributors to give you a telephone contact number and a home or work address. You could easily also ask them to provide an OpenID at this point. If someone signs into the site using an OpenID that doesn't have a CLA on file, you can send them to information about joining Fedora. For existing members you can add an account page which lets them add or remove an OpenID on their account, in the same way that they can currently change their contact details or password. If the CLA is taken very seriously (do you follow-up and check that every telephone number is valid and contacts the person who filled out the form? that every address given is a residential or office address and that the person lives or works there?) then you might want to Whitelist OpenID providers based on their authentication policies, but in any case there is no legal blocker to being a relying party. I hope you can make it happen.
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