Re: [ogpx] A Review of Multi-Domain Use Cases [Was: Re: OpenID and OGP : beginning the discussion ...]

[Morgaine <[e-mail]>]

On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 9:41 PM, Joshua Bell <[e-mail]> wrote:

> Be aware that (firstname, lastname) as a unique identifier within a service
> is a quirk of Second Life, and not necessarily something that every OGP
> provider must use. One could imagine services that use single field account
> identifiers (like most email providers), or allow more flexibility in name
> choice to match real-world conventions.
>

+1

>
> It sounds like we're all agreeing, though - there will be some N-part
> unique identifier (which may be easily human readable, but may not) issued
> by an authoritative domain to a user, and given that the domain almost
> certainly has a globally unique identifier of its own (i.e. DNS name) there
> is a composition of the two that can give a globally unique identifier for
> the agent.
>

+1

>
> We should also be explicit that these identifiers are not necessarily also
> used as authentication credentials. Some service providers may want
> two-factor authentication (e.g. hardware key fob) or private login
> credentials distinct from any public identifiers for additional security.
> The 3-tuple login credentials (firstname, lastname, password) which Second
> Life uses today should not be viewed as the only allowable mechanism.
>

+1

Joshua, you've provided a very concise and precise summary of the overall
requirement --- I agree with this entirely.  Condensing it even further, we
need 3 things, and they are quite independent of each other:


   1. Arbitrary in-world name tags, which have only one intent: to provide a
   customer-satisfying visual name.
   2. Globally unique identifiers, either UUID or formed by composition of
   N-part local name @ issuing authority.
   3. Entirely separate authentication credentials, in other words,
   unrelated to 1) or 2).


Keeping these 3 things entirely disjoint would serve us well in many ways,
particularly in the key areas of scalability, flexibility, uniqueness, and
user-friendliness / appropriateness.


Morgaine.