Gabe Wachob

OpenID v SAML: The Village v The City

Andy Dale nails it when discussing the difference between SAML and OpenID. Why is OpenID getting uptake and SAML is being ignored in the web 2.0 environment:

I imaging a perfectly planned city… you bring together the best minds in social and urban planning and have them design and build the perfect city. Then you ask people to move to it… it’s big and empty and impersonal, its very perfection is off putting and intimidating. Meanwhile, just down the street there is a collection of mud huts with lots of people milling about, drinking beer and having fun. People are flocking to the village and it’s growing rapidly. The urban planners that built the city say; but don’t you see, you will need all the infrastructure that we have built in order to continue to thrive as a community, you’ll need police, medical and fire services, you’ll need schools and water pumping stations. But still people flock to the village to be part of growing something new and exciting. The villagers say; if we need police, someone will step up and become a police man, if there’s a fire we’ll get together and put it out. The inevitable outcome of the growth of the village seems to be a less well planned version of the planned city. It will, by inevitability, have many of the same features, some less well executed and some surprisingly better than the planned city.

To me, and maybe it’s just me, I know I would much rather be part of the village than move into the city.

   

FOR REVIEW: OpenID IPR Policy, Process and Rationale

We've been working on this for months and now we've got it to a state where we'd like public review! Comments should be sent to the legal at openid.net email list, or if that's really too much work, you can add comments to this blog post, and I'll forward them to that list. 

• David Recordon's announcement.
• The documents to review.

Facebook: Be a Supernode, Not the Network

Facebook: Be a supernode in the social network, and DO NOT attempt to own the network itself.

Google is a supernode in the web, on the XMPP network, and in the SMTP network. These are all open networks (which pre-date Google!) and yet Google is undoubtedly the biggest fish (or at least a large fish - thanks Larry for the correction) in these ponds.

In fact, Google embraces the philosophy of being "a big fish in a big pond" to the core. While they are one of the largest providers of web search, XMPP chat, and web mail, they do not erect artificial barriers of interoperability or user mobility. It is so successful because it supports an ecosystem of users, content, and applications that extends way beyond its corporate borders and embraces competitors as a vital part of that ecosystem (do you ever have any problems sending email from gmail to yahoo email?)

Facebook, you are creating an environment where users can't leave without losing that which they invested in (the part of the social network/web that is centered on them). Give them the choice and ability to leave and interoperate with competitors. Then, these users will have more confidence in you, knowing that they are not forced to make a choice between a) accepting whatever you force upon them on the one hand, or b) losing their investment in digitizing their social network. This availability of user choice would constrain your behavior and make you compete for their "social web hosting". In turn, you'll be forced to provide better services, better experience, and will continue to grow - presumably you'll maintain your lead if you are truly delivering value for users. You'll be a supernode in a much larger "open social graph/network" that, in absolute terms, will be far larger than any network you build walls around.

Its really simple: better to be the biggest fish in a big pond rather than a big fish in a small pond..

 

ShesGeeky

Kaliya and Laurie both let me know about ShesGeeky, coming up on Oct 22nd and 23rd at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View (California, in case you didn't know).

The She's Geeky (un)conference will provide an agenda-free and friendly environment for women who not only care about building technology that is useful for people, but who also want to encourage more women to get involved.

It is designed to provide women who self-identify as geeky and who are engaged in various technology-focused disciplines with a gathering space in which they can exchange skills and discuss ideas and form community across and within disciplines.

Our goal is to create an open space forum for women in tech to come together to:

1. Exchange skills and learning from women from diverse fields of technology.
2. Discuss topics about women and technology.
3. Connect the diverse range of women in technology, computing, entrepreneurship, funding, hardware, open source, nonprofit and any other technical geeky field.

This is an unconference so it will have an agenda created by the people who attend.

They're looking for both attendees and sponsors... Tell them I sent you ;-)

My Facebook Manifesto: Three Things I Would Do Right Now If I Was Running Facebook

I think Facebook's launch of the F8 application platform was a great move. It created a community of developers that will do the much of the work of making Facebook more compelling than the rest of the social networking sites.

But I think there are three things I would do right now to keep the momentum going and ensure that Facebook continues to be relevant.

Update 09/17/07: Looks like they were listening to me (hah!)  - Facebook, Accel, and some of the Facebook founders announced a grant program (the fbFund) to fund businesses being built on the Facebook platform.