Re: Strong authentication for PayPal versus WebPayments

On 13 May 2014 00:03, David Nicol <davidnicol@gmail.com> wrote:

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> On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 12:11 PM, Kingsley Idehen <kidehen@openlinksw.com>wrote:
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>> NASCAR isn't necessarily a problem for end-users. This more of a problem
>> for programmers that have to write code for different authentication
>> protocols. We have to keep these concerns loosely coupled.
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> it's easy to imagine an intermediary who vets identity providers and
> publishes a resource that identity consumers
> reference to  easily throw up a block of logos of approved providers. Do
> such not already exist? Businesswise, there are marketing and
> business-model problems, but it's a low-hanging fruit. "We address the
> NASCAR problem so you don't have to" could be the slogan.
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I very much doubt it will go this way.  More likely you'll see
certification for a price.  This was attempted to be rolled out with the
original microsoft passport.  It used to cost (I think) $50,000 to be
approved to passport, and there was a time when I thought that was just the
way it was going to be, in fact I considered saving up the money.

Then OpenID came along, and promised more decentralized identity and it
resonated with the community.  Tho I suspect the OpenID foundation are
probably going to go down the IdP certification route again with tiered
pricing, we will see.

Centralization in identity is perhaps an undesirable avenue for the web to
go down, which is why I like WebID, it's totally decentralized.  I actually
think one of the roles of government is to be an IdP, in fact they already
offer passports.  They have been historically good in this role, and I hope
it becomes a shared benefit of being a citizen, rather than a cost.