Thursday, June 02, 2005
OpenID: an actually distributed identity system
OpenID: an actually distributed identity system: "What
This is a distributed identity system, but one that's actually distributed and doesn't entirely crumble if one company turns evil or goes out of business.
An OpenID identity is just a URL. You can have multiple identities in the same way you can have multiple URLs. All OpenID does is provide a way to prove that you own a URL (identity). And it does this without passing around your password, your email address, or anything you don't want it to. There's no profile exchange component at all: your profiile is your identity URL, but recipients of your identity can then learn more about you from any public, semantically interesting documents linked thereunder (FOAF, RSS, Atom, vCARD, etc.).
Anybody can run their own site using OpenID, and anybody can be an OpenID server, and they all work with each other without having to register with or pay anybody to 'get started'.
While nothing in the protocol requires JavaScript or modern browsers, the authentication scheme plays nicely with 'AJAX'-style setups, so you can prove your identity to a site without bouncing between pages."
This is a distributed identity system, but one that's actually distributed and doesn't entirely crumble if one company turns evil or goes out of business.
An OpenID identity is just a URL. You can have multiple identities in the same way you can have multiple URLs. All OpenID does is provide a way to prove that you own a URL (identity). And it does this without passing around your password, your email address, or anything you don't want it to. There's no profile exchange component at all: your profiile is your identity URL, but recipients of your identity can then learn more about you from any public, semantically interesting documents linked thereunder (FOAF, RSS, Atom, vCARD, etc.).
Anybody can run their own site using OpenID, and anybody can be an OpenID server, and they all work with each other without having to register with or pay anybody to 'get started'.
While nothing in the protocol requires JavaScript or modern browsers, the authentication scheme plays nicely with 'AJAX'-style setups, so you can prove your identity to a site without bouncing between pages."
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