The next generation of Identity

Yesterday a spec was released that solves one of the internet identity problems: how do you let an app access your account at a web service without giving it your username and password. Yahoo, AOL, Flickr and Google all had a slightly different approach to solving this problem, which created additional overhead for developers. OAuth has a site here, and Eran Hammer-Lahav wrote a good background piece here. Could the spec be better? Sure. Does it get the job done? Definately.

What is interesting about this specification is how it was developed. A number of people were at Mashup Camp and decided to work together to solve the problem. A post was made on one of the OpenID lists which raised awareness amongst the identirati and a core group of participants got to work.

Leah Culver from Pownce and Blaine Cook from Twitter did not want to reinvent a solution, and being high profile web 2.0 sites, were able to drive a conclusion to discussion by insisting they needed a spec real-soon-now or they would need to come up with their own. The consummate Web 2.0 rainmaker Chris Messina greased the wheels while Eran of Hueniverse stepped up and did a ton of work editing and consensus building. George Fletcher from AOL was tracking the spec, and there was surprising participation from Google heavy weights John Panzer and Ben Laurie. There were lots of other people involved of course, and the core group was somewhat closed about letting other people in, but at the end of the day a spec was agreed to in only a few months. This is how the internet was built in the old days. It is great to see the tradition continuing today.