David Recorodon announced the OpenID Foundation today on the OpenID general mailing list.
From the post, David mentions the following:
We propose forming an OpenID Foundation (US 501(c)3 non-profit) as a very good way to proceed. This approach would provide:
1) One home for all the IPR.
2) A formal way to engage lawyers and other services on behalf of the OpenID community.
3) A mechanism to provide and maintain hosting infrastructure for the OpenID community.
4) The ability to do inclusive joint marketing efforts in collaboration with the wide OpenID community.The idea is to formally commit to doing everything with the support of this community and we very much want your feedback.
The goal of this organization is not to control OpenID; its to provide a place for the community to thrive. One of the first jobs of the board will be to determine how future boards are chosen with full input from the community. No one is guaranteed a spot on the board just because they are here. This will be merit based and chosen by the community. In the mean time, we needed to get a home created for OpenID as it continues to succeed in the marketplace.
The initial board is made up of companies and members of the community (for some reason that link above doesn’t have David’s full post):
From these companies in the OpenID community, the following individuals have agreed to serve as the initial board for the foundation:
- Artur Bergman (Six Apart, abergman@sixapart.com, San Francisco CA USA)
- David Recordon (VeriSign, drecordon@verisign.com, San Francisco CA USA)
- Dick Hardt (Sxip Identity, dick@sxip.com, Vancouver BC Canada)
- Drummond Reed (Cordance, drummond.reed@cordance.net, Seattle WA USA)
- Johannes Ernst (NetMesh, jernst@netmesh.us, Sunnyvale CA USA)
- Martin Atkins (independent, mart@degeneration.co.uk, Essex England UK)
- Scott Kveton (JanRain, scott@janrain.com, Portland OR USA)
Bill Washburn has also graciously agreed to help us through this process due to his vast experience with organizations like this in the past.
We’re excited about taking OpenID and this community to the next level to help promote and protect all of the hard work that has been going on over the last few years. We greatly value the thoughts of the OpenID community on this. However, if you have any comments, make them to the OpenID General list.
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February 5, 2007 at 9:29 pm
Frank Daley
Every day I have to contend with interoperability issues between Microsoft and Open Source products.
The facts are - Microsoft’s proprietary extensions to core technologies such as DNS, Kerberos, SMB, CIFS, email and calendar technologies etc etc make interoperability with Open Source products very painful. Furthermore, every new version of Windows (and thankfully there haven’t been too many lately!) introduces new gotchas to make life difficult.
So my question to the OpenID Foundation - given your new friendly relationship with Microsoft CardSpace - what guarantees will there be that Microsoft won’t extend to extinguish?
Kim Cameron may be truly dedicated to doing the right thing. However, one day he will be gone. What guarantee is there that having established CardSpace as a ubiquitous technology, it then adds proprietary extensions that yet again makes interoperability with Open Source products?
The reality is that Kim Cameron does not make the final decision on such matters. In reality it is the likes of Steve Ballmer and Microsoft sales executives who will always have the last say on implementations of technology strategies designed to lock-out competitors.
February 5, 2007 at 9:46 pm
kveton
First of all, no one is more leery of Microsoft than me. I’ve made it a point to make sure that software does not require lock-in. This is one of the main reasons I founded the OSL.
We are all very concerned of the scenario you mention. However, looking at the existing technology and the fact that Microsoft has agreed to an open specification promise with regards to it, does give us some confidence.
My thought on this is that CardSpace is going to be out there no matter what. Its a great way to secure your identity as well as ensure privacy when you want to. However, it misses out on the “public” side of my identity. OpenID is the perfect compliment to that.
It should be noted that yes we do support the work of Microsoft with respect to CardSpace we will never require the use of CardSpace for our users (I’m speaking with my JanRain hat on).