So it seems that OpenID is finally gaining that critical momentum it needs to become truly a popular choice for web authentication. I am very pleased by this development, but interested to note that people are mostly unaware of OpenID's origins: did you know that it was invented as part of another open source software project? That project is LiveJournal. And the only reason it got as popular as it did was due to the massive popularity of LiveJournal and it's software.
You see, other websites started to spring out of the ground that used LiveJournal's software which created an inter-website authentication problem. Well, rather than harassing these websites to use LiveJournal's own accounts, they created a rather unique, open and distributed authentication scheme so that users could use the accounts they have at LiveJournal or DeadJournal or wherever else in cooperation with one another. But when they designed it, they made sure that it wasn't restricted only to users of LJ's software. A good idea, and now it has much momentum. I guess though, with KDE using OpenID, it'll provide even more incentive for other community sites to start using it for authentication. It's like MS Passport but done right - open and distributed.
Anyway, enough OpenID goodness.
I'm spending this weekend in the North at the "in-laws", which I put in quotes because they aren't really my in-laws since I'm not really married, but would be considered to be common-law married under most definitions of the law. Unfortunately there isn't a good word in the English language to say in one mouthful "common-law-in-laws". If anyone can come up with a good term for this, I'll use it forever :) Then we can bomb the internet with the term until it becomes so frequently used that M-W or Oxford have to pick it up as a real word. Ideas?
Speaking of terms, in my last entry I had you folks playing the reverse acronym game with the letters KDE. The responses I got back didn't really give anything that I'd be willing to suggest as a replacement for the existing acronym, but it did yield some neat responses. For example, as a wallpaper slogan or similar, "KDE Does Everything" is a great recursive acronym. Other comments agree to simply "undefine" KDE altogether, and I'm not sure this is a fully terrible idea. The problem with undefining it is that we have some momentum to fight against when trying to get people to use it in a more liberal context.
I'll present an example that I've encountered through my early writing over at Ars Technica. When referring to KDE as a community, I can write things like "Basket is a software project that is developed in association with KDE." Is KDE here referring to the Desktop Environment, or the community of people? In this case the usage is ambiguous, and either one would work. However, to the editors at Ars, they have only ever used the term KDE in reference to the actual software, and have difficulty when I write "KDE is debating the use of OpenID" or similar. In this sense, I am referring to KDE as an entity in much the same way that one would use the term "Apple" or "Google". They get hung up on this since they thing that I cannot use a product name as the entity name. This is the problem that led to the previous post about redefining KDE. Leaving it undefined will not solve this problem. The best response was some anonymous newbie on irc suggesting "K Digital Enterprises" to be used when referring to the entity. Not bad, if you ask me (which I'm sure you don't :P).
Lastly, before I quit my rambling, I want to make a few statements (publicly) to clarify my motivations when I wrote that KHTML/Webkit article that I'm sure most everyone has seen floating around. I will quote portions my own email that I sent to Harri about this topic, and I figure should be made public. My goals were, during the writing of that article:
1) To create mindshare for KDE - I'm trying to make it so that when any journalist mentions webkit in any context, they are mentioning KDE (giving credit).
2) To encourage discussion amongst the various contributors to ensure that forking does not get out of hand. This is one of the fears that Apple has with webkit as other companies and projects all start to use it.
3) To encourage those that remain firmly attached to KHTML that the general public would not turn on them for working on Webkit.
4) To [help] heal a wound created in our community due to Apple's original inability to understand how to properly work within the open source world: I will attempt to do this by positively reinforcing their actions whenever they make steps to bring the community in, such that they are more likely to take further steps in the future.
I wrote the original article upon the request of a few of the KDE KHTML folks that are now working within the webkit infrastructure, and my original impression was that consensus was a lot stronger than I now believe. That said, I have stated my goals, and they are valid still. I offer no apologies for it, but I will confess that I will be more cautious in the future when announcing consensus.
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