This post was the result of already giving others the benefit of the doubt, of believing that people had good intentions and hoping that some deal could be done.

I said ‘angry’ because the post seemed quite emotionally charged and called for the boycott of openid.org (damnian’s site goes further and get’s a bit more personal).

It’s a shame that these sorts of politics are distracting from the idea of openid and energy is being expended on boycotting an openid provider and actually blocking/blacklisting an openid provider.

I’ve read your side of the story, and also the other side. It sounds like a simple misunderstanding in expectations and mis-communication. What one side sees as doing a favour to openid by pointing the domain to .net the other sees as trying to gain google juice.

I say, let’s try to work together, give others the benefit of the doubt (and try to assume good intentions rather than bad) and see if some deal can be done - after all, working together with benefit us all in the long run.

I think you’re missing the point about OpenID … this is a community driven project that has been developed by hundreds of people across the globe. Steven has spun up openid.org as an OpenID provider and left it rather ambiguous (see comments above) as to where the community site lives. No company owns OpenID (not even JanRain, Verisign or Sun). It wouldn’t be in the community spirit to make his site THE OpenID site.

How wonderfully ironic that a confusion over identity has appeared on this OpenID debate! :)

Anyway, it seems the original post was written somewhat in anger. The .org site clearly links to .net as the community site and people might read this in different ways. I don’t know whether any private correspondence was initiated to notify the owner of the potential confusion or whether this public posting is the first. Maybe describing it as ‘openid specifications’ may be better.

I don’t see anything wrong with Steve trying to make his site THE openID site. I’m sure JanRain and Verisign are trying to do the same only with bigger budgets and lots of staff.

The conversation happened one-to-many as we had several conversations with Steven via email. This wasn’t intentionally on the down-low, we were just sending notes back and forth.

The Brad that was commenting wasn’t Brad Fitzpatrick, its Brad Topliff formerly of ooTao (an i-name provider).

My comments here are simply as a member of the OpenID community and board member of the OpenID Foundation. In case you hadn’t heard, I’m not with JanRain anymore so I’m not sure where the whole MyOpenID.com “sinking feeling” comes from.

I’d love to see the clarification statement you suggested on openid.org … great idea.

My frustration stems from the fact that we thought Steven was going to transfer the domain to the community and never mentioned his intent to turn it into an OpenID provider. In our discussions, he never mentioned this. Had he done that, we would have been much more vigilant in asking folks to point at openid.net and not the .org. It should be noted that the Google juice is increased because its an exact hit for the domain on an ‘openid’ Google search.

Excellent thoughts on the website … the Marketing list is a great place to share this:

http://openid.net/mailman/listinfo/marketing

Oh, and I broke OpenID this morning on my Wordpress install when I switched themes … thanks for the heads up … I didn’t notice that (I was already logged in).

That said, I stumbled across openid.org yesterday and must say that I was impressed. Steve is clearly attempting to take the `provider` down an interesting new path. Wasn’t this precisely the type of organic growth we’ve come to expect from an open, decentralized, free framework?

I’m glad Brad chimed in last, but not least, with calm nerves. His opinion is one of few to secure a spot in my trust bank. Let me expand on his commentary a bit.

> Who owns this?

> Nobody should own this. Nobody’s planning on making any money from this. The goal is
> to release every part of this under the most liberal licenses possible, so there’s no
> money or licensing or registering required to play. It benefits the community as a whole
> if something like this exists, and we’re all a part of the community. [1]

What’s in a name? Nothing according to OpenID. ’tis the beauty, no? Based on name alone, no entity shall have any more or less significance in terms of providing or consuming identities.

I can imagine the sinking feeling, Scott, when you see MyOpenid.com one step below Steve’s unworthy rank. However, now that openid.org no longer redirects, it will no longer appear in blog posts, forums, etc. Google will pick up on the decline and respond accordingly. Now that the distinction has been made, things will even out.

That is, of course, so long as Steve doesn’t attempt to represent his site as the official. The ball is really in your court Steve. Its neither a technical nor a moral challenge to do right by making a clear distinction between your service offering and the official OpenID project. One line, in bold, atop the page, describing clearly the situation would suffice. Is this too much to ask?

Now to what I see as a far greater problem than a temporary name issue (can’t wait until someone starts using openid.com….):

The tone of this blog post suggests that you’re angry. Is MyOpenid’s comparative google juice at the root of this? Is it that you feel deceived by Steve? Most importantly, is it appropriate for the foundation’s founder to be calling for a boycott over this issue? What a sad thing this would be for the entire OpenID movement if ego and former employer relationships were a bias in this political move. I feel I have both the right and the obligation as a part of the greater community to contest that you clarify that it is your /opinion/ to boycott use of openid.org and not to have it blacklisted on the consumption end. And quick, seeing as your voice has already influenced =damnian to hack up code that could be pushed to a popular CMS. [2]

..sigh.. It’s too bad Brad hasn’t maintained a greater political presence throughout the evolution of OpenID.

- - -

As for the OpenID.net page.. I have a suggestion for the marketing group currently working on the redesign (?). Currently, the landing page contains practically nothing for the end-user. The developers are not the ones who need their hands held throughout this transmigration process from archaic login to holy identity. The *hundreds of millions* of users need help. Thus, why wouldn’t the landing page focus specifically on them with a link “Monkeys this way ->” (kidding) in the top right corner for developers to access wikis, lists, specs, etc.

Lastly and in regards to your self-proclaimed “promoter” and “evangelist” status, Scott, why can’t I use my OpenID to sign this post?

[1] http://openid.net/
[2] http://blog.phpbb.cc/2007/07/20/boycott-openidorg/

As I was part of the conversation back when we were working with Steven to make an offer.

FWIW, the offer was $2000 and we offered to work out a flight for Steven to come out to one of the conferences and be lauded as a helpful and active member of the OpenID community.

The discussion started slowly as Steven lives in the UK and had mush on his plate with the new member of his family. I remember one of the last conversations was when he said that his friends thought he could get a LOT more money from this. The history and nature of the OpenID community makes it particularly predisposed to a distaste for domain profiteering. On the other hand, I can see how a $50k bounty and the presence of a big corporation (Verisign) at the table and millions of OpenIDs in the world would make people think that there are big budgets and a potential pot of gold. The fact is, that there are not big budgets attached to many OpenID initiatives and the marketing group had a lot on their plate with the least resources (and often the least respect in a largely engineering world). Most of what a community like this offers, is a community full of good neighbors that want to help each other succeed. OpenID.org was (and remains) a really nice to have but not something that is going to have a lot of money thrown at it. That is why we offered welcoming arms into the community. I think we offered a “dues-free” membership to the trade org, or at least we were going to offer that before Steven stopped returning messages without offering a counter-proposal.

Steven, I think it is safe to say that your site is confusing to a new person, just reading about OpenID for the first time. You have every right (and duty) to put food on your family’s table and to be an entrepreneur and grab for a golden ring when you see one. I just don’t think that an OpenID.org domain is it. The minimum right thing to do (IMHO) is to give your site a good, solid “who we are” so that people coming only to your site would know think that OpenID was somehow close to 30 days old. Putting a message front and center would be even better.

I don’t know if Scott was proposing a technical “boycott” of OpenID.org as a provider of IDs or merely suggesting that people shouldn’t get their ID at that site. The former is probably extreme and not in the community spirit. The latter is fair enough as an opinion when you think someone in the community is not acting as a very good neighbor.

I think it is still possible to patch things up here without escalating this into an emotional fight. Forget what happened in the past, reset assumptions and start again with clear communication.

I’m just amazed that you say that. Surely the number one FAQ about OpenID is “How do I get one?”. There ought to be a prominent link on the front page to http://openid.net/wiki/index.php/OpenIDServers
Getting end users to use OpenID is far more important than treading on a few toes.

This whole debate reminds me of Jabber. Before Google, do you remember the mess of jabber.com, .org, .net. ? And how the list of public Jabber servers and clients was out of date and most of them didn’t work. Please don’t repeat their mistakes.