[LINK] RFI: OpenID

[Jon Seymour]

Isn't the major difference between Open ID and Passport that there is
no central authentication authority - users (as opposed to service
providers) get to choose which authentication service they wish to
use? The nice thing about Open ID is that if you don't trust anyone
else to act as your authentication service, you (or agents you manage
directly) can act as your own.  This seems quite different in
principle to systems like Passport.

jon seymour.

On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 5:59 PM, Roger Clarke <Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au> wrote:
> Can anyone point to an accessible description of OpenID?
>
>  Like a lot of open source, the sites and the documentation are very much
> by-geeks/for-geeks.
>
>  I suspect that it's just a latter-day MS Passport, but with:
>  -   open specs
>  -   more adopters (among corporations, if not among people)
>  -   the scope for stronger linkage between the id and the entity
>  -   the intention that each person have only one id
>
>  In short, it seems to be just supply-side federated identity management:
>  http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/EC/IdMngt-0804.html#RTFToC14
>  Exhibit 5D: 'Federated Identity Management'
>  (or Interoperable Multi-Supplier Multi-Organisation Single-SignOn)
>
>  But I'd welcome any leads to a description or analysis somewhere between
> the sales blarney at:  http://www.openid.org/
>  and the highly segmented and detailed (and of course necessary) tech-speak
> at:  http://openid.net/developers/specs/
>
>  Thanks!
>
>  --
>  Roger Clarke                  http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/
>                                     Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78
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>  mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http://www.xamax.com.au/
>
>  Visiting Professor in Info Science & Eng  Australian National University
>  Visiting Professor in the eCommerce Program      University of Hong Kong
>  Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW
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