OpenID Foundation is looking for new leadership to guide the project going forward. Executive Director Bill Washburn, who is the only paid employee of the foundation, will be leaving in six months and the entity is looking for a replacement.
Our sources say this was a soft termination, and the organization will look for a harder hitting leader to push partners to implement OpenID more widely and more quickly. Two months ago we wrote that, despite widespread adoption of OpenID by thousands of smaller site, the large Internet players are mostly just sitting on the sidelines, or only becoming issuing entities. Until more large sites also accept OpenID logins, it’s not clear the service can reach ubiquity.
OpenID Vice Chair David Recordon confirmed today that Washburn is leaving and that the organization is looking for a new leader, although he declined to comment on the reasons for the separation. He did say that OpenID is now past the evangelism phase, since most companies are now fully aware of the benefits of the solution, and is looking to move to execution mode. “We need to focus on developer tools and best practices to make sure partners are fully supported,” he said.
There has been progress recently. Google’s new Friend Connect product accepts OpenID logins, and new services like ClickPass are making it easier for users to log in with OpenID.
Talk about euphemisms…….has anyone ever experienced a ’soft termination’?
Does it make you any less fired
Okay this might be a bad place, But has anybody noticed Yahoo finance launched Free realtime stock quotes. There does not seem to be any official announcement. I apologies for being off topic.
Just an idea… what if GoDaddy issued open ids or an open id service when you purchase/register a domain. I think this is actually what Google Apps or some other company should do but I’m sure a registrar could easily sell it or offer it as a value add.
Open ID should be setup like an MX record so that you have absolute control over the identity.
We’ve really got to make OpenID work, whether that means fixing it or just getting people to implement it. Otherwise, the next open standards initiative will be met with even more apprehension than this one was met with.
@1 –
quoted from http://chrissaa...ent-opposition/, interesting read…
I recommend some of the lead influencers who brought Yahoo! OpenID to fruition. Guys like Shreyas Doshi and Allen Tom of Yahoo! have contributed much to the community and would be an excellent choice to help lead the charge.
I’m still waiting for OpenID to just work. Big companies issue IDs, little sites accept them, but the whole process still makes little sense to the avergage user as there’s some sort of key or thing that allows for the login process… Can’t we just use a username and password, store the credentials somewhere and authenticate using that, then create the data profiles from there? Isn’t that the point here?
Then why is it taking so damn long to get this system developed and simplified for everyone to use? [/Rant]
Don’t forget that OpenId just added 2-Factor Authentication via the phone — now making it wicked secure
http://janrain....ble-for-openid/
Must be a slow news day for this to hit TechCrunch.
Like any growing organization, the skill sets required change. Bill has met our exceeded the Foundations expectations. We just need another set of skills for the next phase of the Foundation, and Bill will be an active part of that transition.
Also don’t forget that OpenId still has lots of questions to be answered –
http://idcorner...ms-with-openid/
Here is the official post from the OpenID Foundation:
http://openid.n...er-in-the-oidf/
soft termination >> featured (with photo) on techcrunch >> no longer so soft!
poor guy:)
Interesting.. I think Open ID is perfectly positioned for success. All of the early adopters have the headache, the audience is just waking up to the migraine – I just hope it’s successful before someone less benevolent makes a more limited solution..
Although, secretly, I think perhaps there’s danger around things like this… identity, behavioral metadata – these are the next generations crown jewels.
#3 John:
What you describe is, I think, Inames. Which is one of the types of OpenID. Your provider is essentially a domain seller, and there is a DNS-like lookup when I use =mary. There are other OpenID types as well… most popular being the URL string from things like Live Journal or Yahoo. But the point is, whether you use a URL string or an Iname, the ID system looks up the origin, sends you to your provider, you login, and then they authenticate you back to the system you are trying to get into.
mary
OpenID is too complicated for end-users. I don’t see any future for it.
- type your open id
- get redirected to a 3d party website
- login there
What’s the point? If it actually kept you loged in, that’s another thing.
Browsers are good at storing passwords right now, so keeping one login and different passwords for all sites solve the problem.
Using google-accounts is less sofisticated and let’s you login with 2 clicks.
The main problem is that when you sign up on a new site you still have to enter tons of data. An open ID should have stored all the data like contacts, screen-names on all the services, basic profile data and images and show which data a 3d party web-site will get if you deside to join it.
Decentralisation is good…
But it kills the concept. Users should be send to one site to login.
OpenID is a highly needed, but dead concept.
Untill they restructure it – it will stay dead even if google, myspace, facebook and yahoo will start accepting OpenID logins.
@ R. Titus (#13), I think you hit the nail on the head.
If one entity knows:
1) every site I log into
2) how often I log in
There is a great amount of metadata there, and if someone is collecting that data, I want the ability to view it and erase it permanently (or even download it when technically feasible).
@PeoplePortability, was Chris Saad implying that he’s a ‘great thinker’? What a joke!
The data portability debate is ridiculously pompous. This is not some fundamental human rights issue.
Ultimately sites will decide based on their business interests whether they’ll go along with data portability. For some sites it will make sense, for others it won’t.
Saad’s efforts will end up handing Google more opportunities for making money on other people’s data/content, making Google even more rich and powerful.
The whole web 2.0 everything-is-free (paid by advertising) paradigm is rooted in user data. If you take that away, expect to pay for services.
Bingo buzzword, gratuitous use of “going forward” gets you points with the bureaucrats, makes you the laughing stock of the real world.