Implemented OpenID... why?

[Thom McGrath]

I just completed implementation of an OpenID server (this is home- 
grown, not a standard library). This was hard without a good tutorial  
and whatnot, but besides the point. I'm also planning on creating the  
consumer end. But then I ran into a logic issue: why?

Since OpenID doesn't appear to share any user information at all, why  
on earth am I doing this. If I want to allow people to login to my  
site via OpenID, I still need to ask them for all the standard  
registration info, like name and e-mail. That seems very... useless.

 From openid.net: "There's no profile exchange component at all: your  
profiile is your identity URL, but recipients of your identity can  
then learn more about you from any public, semantically interesting  
documents linked thereunder (FOAF, RSS, Atom, vCARD, etc.)."

Is there a defined API for second call for data, or are we on our own  
for that one? I mean, OpenID seems like a fantastic idea and  
implementation, but the process of actually *getting* to a user's  
data seems to be completely undefined. Am I wrong?

--
Thom McGrath, <http://www.thezaz.com/>
"You realize you've created God in your own image when God hates all  
the same people you do."