[humanities-dev] Federated ID for TEXTUS

Thu Feb 23 11:01:28 UTC 2012

Just to be clear: you will *always* end up need to store profile
information (username, email a.n.other info) for your users. As such
all OpenID solves for you is not having to store a password (really
not a big deal). I would also note that at least Google OpenID
implementation changes the openid depending on your hostname so it you
ever switch hostname (e.g. remove www all your openid logins get
b0rked)

In my experience OpenID brought us few benefits with substantial pain.
I don't mind using OpenID (or twitter oauth, or facebook login or
anything else) for managing basic authentication but it will need to
be in addition to a basic user/account model we build so I'd recommend
starting with basic user + password.

Rufus

On 22 February 2012 23:36, Tom Oinn <tom.oinn at okfn.org> wrote:
> 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
>
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