3 ms·

Yeah the ability to easily self-host an identity server or to be able to just pay someone else to be hosted on theirs is hugely important. Also the ability to

Yeah the ability to easily self-host an identity server or to be able to just pay someone else to be hosted on theirs is hugely important. Also the ability to easily move your identity and inform people you have moved so they can update. Doing that last part securely is one of the things that hung me up when thinking about it, but I also only really dug into it for an hour or so.

wmf 17y ago
Also the ability to easily move your identity and inform people you have moved so they can update. I think DNS is the key here; it lets you move a server while keeping the same name.
- runevault 17y ago
  That works if you have a domain name just for your "identity", but if you are hosting on someone else's then it gets interesting. Of course I may be stuck on the way I was looking at it of a fully qualified URL (say http://runevault.com/runevault http://runevault.com/runevault for my id, and I don't think DNS currently goes farther then domains).
  - rue 17y ago
    Being that it is the Domain Name System...:)
- Todd 17y ago
  This can be handled by 301 redirect or it can be built into the protocol. When moving a profile from one provider to another, the standard could require a response indicating the location of the profile for a minimum period of time (such as a week or a month). A standard such as this would be crawled on a frequent basis by the social network apps built on top of it, as well as the search engines. They would all update their canonical profile addresses and that would be that--an organic, self repairing network.
  - wmf 17y ago
    I don't even trust providers enough to provide a 301 redirect, but your paranoia may vary.
wisty 17y ago
Dreamhost costs about $50 a year. That's not a lot. Of course, it's not a turn key solution, but I'm sure they'd support one if it emerged. Getting people to pay for an otherwise free service might be tricky, but I'm sure google would foot the bill (and do the hosting) if they got to push more ad-words. It will probably go: self-hosted and hosted (by techies), then big companies find a way to do the hosting for non-techies in order to push ads. Movable identities - DNS works. A DHT with email-addresses as the primary key (rather than domain names) would also work (though you would need some karma ratings system to keep it from being hacked). You would either use DNS, or reinvent a DNS-like protocol. No big deal.

wmf 17y ago

Also the ability to easily move your identity and inform people you have moved so they can update. I think DNS is the key here; it lets you move a server while keeping the same name.

runevault 17y ago
That works if you have a domain name just for your "identity", but if you are hosting on someone else's then it gets interesting. Of course I may be stuck on the way I was looking at it of a fully qualified URL (say http://runevault.com/runevault http://runevault.com/runevault for my id, and I don't think DNS currently goes farther then domains).
- rue 17y ago
  Being that it is the Domain Name System...:)
Todd 17y ago
This can be handled by 301 redirect or it can be built into the protocol. When moving a profile from one provider to another, the standard could require a response indicating the location of the profile for a minimum period of time (such as a week or a month). A standard such as this would be crawled on a frequent basis by the social network apps built on top of it, as well as the search engines. They would all update their canonical profile addresses and that would be that--an organic, self repairing network.
- wmf 17y ago
  I don't even trust providers enough to provide a 301 redirect, but your paranoia may vary.

wisty 17y ago

Dreamhost costs about $50 a year. That's not a lot. Of course, it's not a turn key solution, but I'm sure they'd support one if it emerged. Getting people to pay for an otherwise free service might be tricky, but I'm sure google would foot the bill (and do the hosting) if they got to push more ad-words. It will probably go: self-hosted and hosted (by techies), then big companies find a way to do the hosting for non-techies in order to push ads. Movable identities - DNS works. A DHT with email-addresses as the primary key (rather than domain names) would also work (though you would need some karma ratings system to keep it from being hacked). You would either use DNS, or reinvent a DNS-like protocol. No big deal.