[humanities-dev] Federated ID for TEXTUS

Wed Feb 22 23:36:03 UTC 2012

To use TEXTUS users are going to have to identify themselves (or at
least to use most of its interesting features). Do we have a
preference for how this happens? This is just how we acquire the user
ID and verify it, not where the user's data is stored, a few options
would be:

OpenID - widely used, anyone with a Google or Yahoo! account has an
OpenID even if they don't know it
Facebook Connect - authenticate against facebook accounts, never used
this but it's an option
Roll our own - more hassle, users have to remember logins and
passwords specific to this system, they'll inevitably end up using the
same ones as they use for the email accounts, we have to verify
accounts etc

As you might have guessed I'm in favour of OpenID or, if we must,
rolling our own. I have a strong objection to Facebook Connect due to
that company's cavalier attitude towards privacy, user data etc, but
it does work for this kind of thing. Of course, if someone were to
turn round and point out a cross-OKFN standard way of doing this
that'd be even better.

Tom