[OT] Re: User @ domain.tld as ID (Once again)

[Martin Atkins]

Mike Hearn wrote:
> On Thu, 03 Nov 2005 16:01:21 +0000, Martin Atkins wrote:
> 
>>So my proposal is this: YADIS will go ahead and use URLs, because it has 
>>to as a fundamental requirement. Another spec can try to standardize 
>>mapping an email address onto a URL, which will then automatically 
>>enable YADIS to use email addresses. There's no reason why these two 
>>things have to be bound together into one spec.
> 
> 
> That's not so useful, as users could never know if whatever random
> implementation the website is using will accept their email address or
> not. So you basically have to use a URL, and we're back to the original
> problem that people bring up all the time (which revolves around
> usability, really).
> 

For a while, there'll also be a bunch of different signon protocols 
going on:
* OpenID
* LID
* TypeKey
* OpenID through YADIS
* LID through YADIS
* TypeKey through YADIS

The idea here is to provide a mechanism for the world to decide which 
spec wins, so necessarily there will be an interim period where 
everyone's incompatible.

Given that we have to allow URLs anyway, allowing email addresses just 
adds another possibility to that list, which doesn't seem like an 
improvement to me.

Your analogy to PNG seems to help my point because they chose to take 
the simpler path of deciding on one way of doing it, rather than 
providing two. Supporting email addresses and URLs is obviously more 
complicated than supporting just URLs.