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Persona is distributed. Today.

identity.mozilla.com

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Re: Persona is distributed. Today.

#11

Post by monkeynotes »

rattray wrote: post #5

Can anybody explain exactly what is meant by "distributed" here?

No single authority is needed to vouch for a given identity, instead numerous authorities can validate an identity. That's my understanding.

Distributed identity seems to be notoriously tricky to fully understand for both end-users and developers. I still don't really get OpenID.

Re: Persona is distributed. Today.

#12

Post by csense »

How is this different from OpenID?

EDIT: Seriously, this question was downvoted within two minutes? Why?

EDIT again: The best I've been able to come up with by reading the comments and docs is that they attempt to solve the same problem, but OpenID is based on the backend of the website you're logging into issuing a request to the auth server over HTTP, while Persona has the auth server issue a very-short-duration cert for a public key generated by the client.

Re: Persona is distributed. Today.

#13

Post by enaeseth »

rattray wrote: post #5

Can anybody explain exactly what is meant by "distributed" here?

Online login services are generally many-to-one. For example, many sites accept Facebook login, but for a user to log in that way, there is only one identity provider they can use: Facebook. If you don't have a Facebook account, or don't want the site in question to have any access to it, you can't use Facebook login.

When the article says "distributed", it means Persona is many-to-many. Any domain can implement the protocol, so when a site accepts Persona login, you can choose from many identity providers – including your own, if you're industrious and want to set one up for your domain. Most people are using Mozilla's service today, but the idea is that email providers like gmail will implement it themselves in the future.

Re: Persona is distributed. Today.

#14

Post by JoshTriplett »

Currently wondering the most sensible approach to make a single-user website support this protocol, so that I can make my email address (the only valid email address at my domain) support Persona natively. I don't really want to have to set up a username/password system with a single user. I'd almost prefer to manually hand my identity's private key to each browser I want to use. I wonder how much work it would take to write a Firefox extension that does this and uses Sync to snychronize the key between browsers?

Re: Persona is distributed. Today.

#15

Post by pindi »

rattray wrote: post #5

Can anybody explain exactly what is meant by "distributed" here?

It's used in the sense of "decentralized": no one company controls the Persona system as a whole. Authentication is performed against the domain of the email address the user gives, falling back to authenticating with Mozilla's central server if and only if the domain doesn't support Persona yet.

Re: Persona is distributed. Today.

#16

Post by mcpherrinm »

eliasmacpherson wrote: post #9

http://www.getpersonas.com/en-US/ I have been confused by the distinction between these two for the longest time, and I'm hardly alone. Any plans to rename one or the other?

The plan was to deprecate personas as a name for background themes.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/themes/ doesn't use the word "persona" anywhere I can see any more.

I don't know why getpersonas.com hasn't been axe-murdered yet. (Edit: info on migration is here, https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2013/02/28/getpersonas-com-m... and is ongoing)

Re: Persona is distributed. Today.

#18

Post by [deleted] »

csense wrote: post #12

How is this different from OpenID? EDIT: Seriously, this question was downvoted within two minutes? Why? EDIT again: The best I've been able to come up with by reading the comments and docs is that they attempt to solve the same problem, but OpenID is based on the backend of the website you're logging into issuing a request to the auth server over HTTP, while Persona has the auth server issue a very-short-duration ce…

[deleted]

Re: Persona is distributed. Today.

#19

Post by agilebyte »

rattray wrote: post #5

Can anybody explain exactly what is meant by "distributed" here?

I guess they mean that you do not have to use Mozilla servers and can setup your own one (with a retina scan...). I still prefer using theirs as it is less hassle and the same identity can be used across multiple websites.

Re: Persona is distributed. Today.

#20

Post by wmf »

csense wrote: post #12

How is this different from OpenID? EDIT: Seriously, this question was downvoted within two minutes? Why? EDIT again: The best I've been able to come up with by reading the comments and docs is that they attempt to solve the same problem, but OpenID is based on the backend of the website you're logging into issuing a request to the auth server over HTTP, while Persona has the auth server issue a very-short-duration ce…

Firefox supports Persona and they're not going to support OpenID.
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