[webfinger] Vision for Webfinger - what are we doing?

Eric Mill <eric@konklone.com> Tue, 15 October 2013 03:22 UTC

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From: Eric Mill <eric@konklone.com>
Date: Mon, 14 Oct 2013 23:21:33 -0400
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Subject: [webfinger] Vision for Webfinger - what are we doing?
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Hey all,

I was at a hackathon
<http://fedscoop.com/code-dc-calls-furloughed-feds/> today,
and spent the day working on Webfinger libraries for
Sinatra<https://github.com/konklone/sinatra-webfinger>and
Jekyll <https://github.com/konklone/jekyll-webfinger>. It was really
productive, but -- at the end of the day, a reporter was there asking
everybody questions about their projects.

When he asked what Webfinger was for, I realized that the original
easy-to-communicate killer app for Webfinger, easing universal login
through OpenID,
was<http://productblogarchive.37signals.com/products/2011/01/well-be-retiring-our-support-of-openid-on-may-1.html>
dead <https://www.myopenid.com/>. The only thing I could think to say was
"Remember OpenID? Before it died? Well, this is a piece of the puzzle to
putting something like that back together again."

That didn't feel like a very impressive answer. So, now that OpenID is
dead, what's the one line explanation for why Webfinger is important?
What's the path forward to making Webfinger something people are
incentivized to support?

Should we be pushing really hard to resuscitate OpenID via OpenID Connect?
Do we just need to wait for internal lobbying inside of
Google/Microsoft/Twitter/etc to pay off in some announcement? I know
Webfinger supports more than email lookup -- is there some particular
killer app people were envisioning when they lobbied for that feature?

I'm so happy there's finally an RFC, after so many years. I recognize how
much work was put in to make that happen, and this shouldn't be taken as a
criticism of anyone. I just want to know what others see for the future of
Webfinger, and what I should do next.

-- Eric

-- 
konklone.com | @konklone <https://twitter.com/konklone>