OpenID - Ready for Prime Time?

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(Subtitle: "Reality.sys not found. Universe halted.")

I saw a video on OpenId by Simon Williston, and checked out the main site, and I did manage to find an implementation of server and client for ".NET", but - it was ported from something for MONO, there was no source code, and the original was written in BOO for .NET.

There seems to be a lot of activity around OpenId, one could possibly make the case that this represents what Microsoft hoped to do with Passport (oh, wait, I think it's "LiveID" now), or at least what everybody else hoped to do with it.

The concept is pretty simple, you get a URI that exclusively identifies you and is difficult to spoof, and it allows you to do single sign-on (or at least use the same credentials mechanism) at multiple sites.

I have no particular problem with BOO, I could use SharpDevelop, which supports it, but my real question is why isn't this authored in an industry - standard certified CLI language such as C#? It just seem like so much stuff was cobbled together, I think at this point the best thing to do is wait.

I like the concept, and I'd implement it on sites I develop, but not without a lot more infrastructure support and less FUD.

A recent survey of the Fortune 1000 websites by Port80 Software shows that Microsoft's Internet Information Services (IIS) is being used by 54.9 percent of companies. and the ASP.NET platform is being run by 48.4 percent of the companies. You can dispute the figures as being biased but the bottom line is, if you want to gain broad acceptance of a platform or standard, you have to embrace the entire market, not just the Penguinistas. This, to me, represents a gaping hole in whatever marketing strategy the OpenId crowd may have.


This is one of the trouble areas that you can find with open-source initiatives -- you can get a kind of fragmentation where individual efforts go off in different directions, and although the intentions are noble, there may not be some central authority that helps to tie everything together and you run the risk of having a real mess on your hands. I really hope they get it sorted out better. I am a big proponent of open-source software and platforms. It's just that open-source still requires leadership and proper management to succeed.

Just my $0.02 .

Peter has been active on the C# and other MS newsgroups, has had samples at gotdotnet.com (now codegallery.com) that have been downloaded over 56,000 times, and has written numerous articles for eggheadcafe.com, for which he is a co-founder, and MSDNAA sites. He has also been a technical reviewer on books from Prentice Hall, Manning and other publishers. Peter was a Microsoft MVP for 10 years. Peter was born and raised in New York City, and after a stint as a jazz musician playing contrabass with the Robert Hunt Trio, migrated to sunny Florida, where he was hired as a rookie Financial Consultant at Merrill Lynch in Orlando, specializing in Corporate Services. It was at Merrill that Peter realized computers and technology were his forte. He spent his last few years at Merrill developing real – time computerized trading and and stock charting program using advanced technical analysis indicators, some of which are his own inventions. In 1997, he moved on to architect and serve as lead developer on a number of innovative web-based and middleware solutions for the healthcare and financial services industry.

Comments

  1. Scott Kveton11:07 PM

    Note: the OpenID main site is located at openid.net. The page you reference as the "main site" is just the OpenID wiki.

    As for the lack of support for .NET its definitely not intentional. When we wrote the .NET library we did so to round out the full suite of web libraries we were already doing. Unfortunately, there was simply a lack of interest in the .NET library so we have let it lapse.

    As the OpenID platform grows, invariably someone will pick up the ball and develop an open source version (maybe even starting off from where we did) of the .NET library. It was not about just catering to the penguinistas, it was about catering to existing demand.

    For OpenID to really, really take off we're going to need everything. Heck, I'm hearing people ask me "is there a library for C++?" The more the merrier when it comes to library support, I say.

    ReplyDelete
  2. peterbromberg3:05 PM

    Thanks for correcting the link, I've changed it in the post.

    I understand the .NET effort was not intentional, what bothers me is the claim there was a lack of interest.

    I find this difficult to fathom, considering the large number of active .NET developers in the global marketplace. I don't have the time or I'd do it myself. But I thing putting out something with the moniker "C#" on it and having it written in BOO with dependencies that come from MONO isn't a step in the right direction, its more like "lip service".

    I'm not sure you need a C++ library as most web development is done in PHP, ASP (Classic), ROR, and ASP.NET (including to a lesser extent, MONO).

    Best of luck, and thanks for the comment.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous7:59 PM

    Yeah, right, BOO, omgwtf. I sense an act of subconscious sabotage.

    ReplyDelete

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