Fwd: Persona 2015 through 2016

FYI: 'If we are not making meaningful progress or do not have a credible
plan on that date, then Mozilla will announce an intent to end-of-life
Persona, with a server turnoff date of June 30th, 2016.'

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dan Callahan <dcallahan@mozilla.com>
Date: 30 October 2014 20:36
Subject: Persona 2015 through 2016
To: dev-identity@lists.mozilla.org


Hey all,

Last week, Gene Wood (former Persona ops) and I met again with Mark Mayo
(VP of Services) to discuss Persona's longer-term future at Mozilla.

Over the past year, Firefox Accounts (FxA) has drifted toward a traditional
(OAuth) model, and away from possible synergies with BrowserID or Persona.
This puts Persona in a bind: work on FxA will not benefit Persona, and vice
versa. MoCo's organizational priorities remain the same: developers are
focusing on FxA, and that focus is unlikely to shift to Persona in the
foreseeable future.

This isn't sustainable for Persona, nor for Mozilla. If we, as a community,
want to see Persona succeed, then we must work together and remove
Persona's reliance on Mozilla for the centralized fallback.

Here's the deal:

1. Persona will continue to receive its current level of support
(operations, security, monitoring, etc.) from Mozilla through 2015.

2. We have until June 30th, 2015 to return to a trajectory of growth,
external contribution, sustainability, and independence from the
Mozilla-operated fallback IdP.

3. If we are not making meaningful progress or do not have a credible plan
on that date, then Mozilla will announce an intent to end-of-life Persona,
with a server turnoff date of June 30th, 2016.

Now, it's not all doom and gloom. Persona was designed to be decentralized.
The only thing at risk is a single, centralized fallback. Which we needed
to get rid of anyway.

1. If we make it easier to self-host Persona, we remove the dependency on
Mozilla's fallback and we're golden.

2. If a compatible custodian steps up and commits engineering and
operational resources to Persona, we remove the dependency on Mozilla's
fallback and we're golden.

Further, if we can articulate a specific set of engineering tasks that need
to be accomplished to make a transition to a specific custodian feasible,
then Mozilla is willing to temporarily commit engineers to Persona in order
to make that happen.

If you believe in Persona or if your organization relies on Persona, now is
the time to step up. Our combined effort over the next 8 months will
determine Persona's fate in 2016.

Our immediate goals remain the same: enable new contributions through
better documentation, and split up the repository into independent modules
for ease of maintenance. Look for another email regarding specific bugs to
tackle soon.

We're kicking Persona out of the nest.

It's time for it to fly.

Best,
-Callahad

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