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Introducing Mozilla Persona, An Identity System for the Web

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Re: Introducing Mozilla Persona, An Identity System for the Web

#11

Post by thristian »

hinting wrote: post #6

Honest question: As an app builder, why would you use this instead of facebook? Many more users are going to have Facebook logins already, and it provides social information that may be useful to your app. (Hoping to hear answers other than the dev-centric 'I don't like facebook')

One good reason: If Facebook goes broke, or decides to stop offering their authentication service, or anything like that, your user database is now filled with useless Facebook user IDs. If Mozilla's Persona system goes broke or gets taken offline, your user database is now filled with perfectly good, validated email addresses, so you can still contact your users and/or match up new registrations with existing accounts.

Re: Introducing Mozilla Persona, An Identity System for the Web

#12

Post by moxie »

hinting wrote: post #6

Honest question: As an app builder, why would you use this instead of facebook? Many more users are going to have Facebook logins already, and it provides social information that may be useful to your app. (Hoping to hear answers other than the dev-centric 'I don't like facebook')

Exactly, and I think it's possible that Mozilla just doesn't understand this. Webapps aren't attracted to identity providers because they want to avoid managing a user table in their database, but because existing identity providers like Facebook provide a set of "social" APIs that can support the webapp. I can't see why a site would be drawn to BrowserID instead.

Re: Introducing Mozilla Persona, An Identity System for the Web

#13

Post by PuerkitoBio »

hinting wrote: post #6

Honest question: As an app builder, why would you use this instead of facebook? Many more users are going to have Facebook logins already, and it provides social information that may be useful to your app. (Hoping to hear answers other than the dev-centric 'I don't like facebook')

I can see a website offering only Persona/BrowserId, as it doesn't force you to create an account with a "commercial" website. If you go with Facebook for login, you have to offer an alternative because if a user doesn't have a fb account, it has way more implications to open a fb account than to create a browserid account. I just hope Mozilla don't overgrow it into something more than a simple auth system (like building a social network around it!).

Re: Introducing Mozilla Persona, An Identity System for the Web

#14

Post by immad »

thristian wrote: post #11
hinting wrote: post #6

Honest question: As an app builder, why would you use this instead of facebook? Many more users are going to have Facebook logins already, and it provides social information that may be useful to your app. (Hoping to hear answers other than the dev-centric 'I don't like facebook')

One good reason: If Facebook goes broke, or decides to stop offering their authentication service, or anything like that, your user database is now filled with useless Facebook user IDs. If Mozilla's Persona system goes broke or gets taken offline, your user database is now filled with perfectly good, validated email addresses, so you can still contact your users and/or match up new registrations with existing accoun…

If you ask for the permission Facebook will give you the users email address.

You can additionally just ask for the users email address.

Any one building a serious business using facebook auth does one of the above.

Re: Introducing Mozilla Persona, An Identity System for the Web

#15

Post by Alex3917 »

rubberband wrote: post #3

So we have this, Open ID, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft Passport/Live ID, and probably like five other major players I'm forgetting. I apologize for being pessimistic, but this just doesn't seem like a solvable problem. I want it to be solvable, but players like Facebook benefit far too much for them to not push their particular version of "universal" login on everyone. Every player seems to think they are the…

I think if you look at Kim Cameron's Laws of Identity, it's clear that the research team at MS has had it right for at least a decade, it's just that none of their ideas have made it into production.

http://www.identityblog.com/stories/2004/12/09/thelaws.html

Ballmer had both the plans and source code for an identity product that would have been 10x more advanced than Facebook, but they decided to axe the project so they could make the Zune instead.

Re: Introducing Mozilla Persona, An Identity System for the Web

#16

Post by rfk »

rubberband wrote: post #3

So we have this, Open ID, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft Passport/Live ID, and probably like five other major players I'm forgetting. I apologize for being pessimistic, but this just doesn't seem like a solvable problem. I want it to be solvable, but players like Facebook benefit far too much for them to not push their particular version of "universal" login on everyone. Every player seems to think they are the…

There is work underway to transparently proxy between several major identity providers and the BrowserID protocol that underlies Mozilla Persona:

  https://github.com/mozilla/browserid-bigtent

Re: Introducing Mozilla Persona, An Identity System for the Web

#17

Post by uptown »

cleverjake wrote: post #10
rubberband wrote: post #3

So we have this, Open ID, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft Passport/Live ID, and probably like five other major players I'm forgetting. I apologize for being pessimistic, but this just doesn't seem like a solvable problem. I want it to be solvable, but players like Facebook benefit far too much for them to not push their particular version of "universal" login on everyone. Every player seems to think they are the…

we had dozens of search engines when google came out. someone just hasn't got it right yet.

And yet some would argue that Google has begun to get search wrong. What happens when the "right" identity solution does the same?

Re: Introducing Mozilla Persona, An Identity System for the Web

#18

Post by tg3 »

immad wrote: post #14
thristian wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One good reason: If Facebook goes broke, or decides to stop offering their authentication service, or anything like that, your user database is now filled with useless Facebook user IDs. If Mozilla's Persona system goes broke or gets taken offline, your user database is now filled with perfectly good, validated email addresses, so you can still contact your users and/or match up new registrations with existing accoun…

If you ask for the permission Facebook will give you the users email address. You can additionally just ask for the users email address. Any one building a serious business using facebook auth does one of the above.

IIRC email is one of the few pieces of information about users that you get by default, and cannot be revoked by the user (without revoking the app entirely)

Re: Introducing Mozilla Persona, An Identity System for the Web

#19

Post by diffeomorph »

uptown wrote: post #17
cleverjake wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we had dozens of search engines when google came out. someone just hasn't got it right yet.

And yet some would argue that Google has begun to get search wrong. What happens when the "right" identity solution does the same?

You get another one. There's no true stability in this world. You try your best to find an optimal solution and keep working at it.

Re: Introducing Mozilla Persona, An Identity System for the Web

#20

Post by glassx »

I believe that a native implementation has been on their plans from the start, but I haven't heard much about it lately. Here's some mockups:

http://people.mozilla.com/%7Efaaborg/files/projects/firefoxA...

There's also some work on integrating existing e-mail providers, so you can get instant identities:

http://identity.mozilla.com/post/17207734786/id-provider-sup...

This is probably the web-thing I'm most excited about today, even though the development is kinda slow. I really want to implement it as a sole identity provider on my websites some day.

EDIT: I also began writing a Safari extension that would work like the mockup above, but gave up halfway since it was too convoluted and totally insecure... maybe I should try writing a SIMBL plugin or something like that.

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