I’ve recently set up my site’s url as an OpenID so I could comment on blogs that support OpenID, such as Six Apart’s LiveJournal. OpenID is a decentralized, extendable authentication system supported by a number of applications. (I am planning on adding WordPress OpenID comments.)
Six Apart’s Vox social networking and blogging platform, Vox, launched in late October 2006. It’s actually a really well-done, feature-rich system, that I’d consider using to host my blog if I weren’t an techie primadona. There’s some design goals, notably the privacy features, that I don’t really consider to be in line with my criteria for a blogging platform, but the integration with third party services like Flickr and YouTube is laudable.
Six Apart is also the home of the Moveable Type blogging platform, which by Google’s estimation, is a turd. I really am unhappy that my job chose this as their blogging platfom.
Moveable Type (and the commercial service TypePad) were responsible for the (mostly) failed centralized Six Apart authentication system, TypeKey. SixApart seems to have moved to letting TypeKey expose an OpenID interface as pretty much everyone seems to be moving towards OpenID. LiveJournal, perhaps the most popular of their properties, has OpenID functionality and accepts OpenID comments. In fact, I registered a LiveJournal account specifically for a reliable OpenID delegate.
Vox announced its support for OpenID on Brad Fitzpatrick’s Vox blog during the public beta of Vox (June 2006). However, when I attempted to comment on Sean Carruthers‘ Vox blog, I noticed that Vox’s support for OpenID is strictly unidirectional; Vox identities export OpenID, but Vox does not support comments, etc. from any other OpenID providers, including LiveJournal. I can understand their desire to push users towards using VOX and have seen the this approach succeed before. However, without reciprocity in Vox’s OpenID comment system, any lure that this may have had towards more technical users is wasted. Promoting social networks as closed content sinks is not going to succeed in this totally saturated market.
If OpenID becomes very popular for single sign-on, I predict that services that do not offer reciprocal functionality to other sites, will become the victims of blacklisting. At that point in time, I would take this step were I in a position where such pressure would force reciprocity. So here’s the first shot across the bow.
Vox (and all sites with an OpenID server): allow inbound OpenID support for your services on par with “native” users. Without this functionality, OpenID - a good, open standard - will die before it makes any progress at all.
December 16, 2006 at 2:36 am
Hey, we didn’t just create OpenID, we *like* it. Despite not really working too hard to charm us into doing better, I’ve got good news about most of the points you’ve raised.
First, OpenID client support will be coming to Vox, and the OpenID plugins for Movable Type (client & server) are constantly improving.
MT’s doing really, really, well, actually… as you can tell by the Google graph, our users are too busy succeeding with their blogs to spend time talking about their software. And Movable Type Enterprise is one of our most successful product launches ever. So, you know, hooray turds.
We have no interest in being a closed system like MySpace. Vox supports exporting all of your content now (read/write is through the GData API) and in fact we used our slot at Web 2.0 to talk about how you can get your data in and out of Vox and retain control over it. Call us crazy.
TypeKey? Failure? Let’s see.. you list a platform with fewer than a million users as a success above, and there are about 5 million+ active TypeKey accounts. So I’d guess it’s a success by that metric. More importantly, we did a centralized authentication service because we felt it was needed at the time. Now that we’ve got OpenID, TypeKey can become just one of many free OpenID providers. Which is cool, because it’s already an OpenID provider.
Given your eagerness to support the format, I’d love to see you encourage other open source blogging tools, such as the one you use, to support OpenID better. And I’d point out that you might find your advocacy efforts more effective if you spend less time insulting or tearing down the people that create, develop, deploy, disseminate, document, and promote technologies that you support. Feel free to ping me if you’d like to help get the word out to more of the open source community.
December 16, 2006 at 2:16 pm
Hi Anil, thanks for responding. I’m glad that Vox will be getting OpenID client support. I should have been more focused in my criticism of Six Apart’s stuff and left my Vi/Emacs-style beef with Moveable Type out. As far as TypeKey, my objections are towards introducing any dependency on a centralized authority. Obviously, these are moot with TypeKey’s support for OpenID.
Again, perhaps you’ve mistaken me for something I’m not; I don’t see myself as speaking for any user community - WordPress, OpenID or anyone; I’m just an early adopter. My criticism should be directed at the entire set of OpenID boosters. Why did I bother to implement OpenID on my URL, if it doesn’t work where I expected it to? Why hasn’t Vox been asked this before by other OpenID people? I’m not going to be convince my less technical friends to setup their personal blogs/homepages/whatever for OpenID if it won’t work as expected. (I’m beginning to feel this effect with blog Pingback/Trackbacks not working everywhere.)
(I agree that WordPress’ support for OpenID is pretty laughable though!)
December 16, 2006 at 8:10 pm
No sweat on the criticisms — you’d think I’d be more thick-skinned by now!
And you’re right, as advocates and creators of technology, we should try to be leading by example and eating our own dogfood as much as possible.
And I’m all for pointless Vi/Emacs or Mac vs. Windoze flamewars in their place; I just hate to sully the legitimate criticisms with that stuff.
January 30, 2007 at 10:22 pm
Flickr.com - who’s in?…
re 1) Using URLS is more practical since everyone deploying this has a web server but people are going to be adverse to deploying something like kerberos or whatever. There’s ample precedent for this with Web Service APIs, etc.
2) I’m not sure what …
January 31, 2007 at 12:57 am
Be an online analyst!…
This guy is a little bit too combative with the spin:
http://www.brianoberkirch.com/?p=841
http://wizardishungry.com/blog/archive/six_aparts_support_for_openid_is_a_one-way_street_trife_bitches_still_love_money...