He's not recommending creating an alternative to contrib.auth, he's talking about an auth backend. http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/auth/#other-auth

He's not recommending creating an alternative to contrib.auth, he's talking about an auth backend. http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/auth/#other-authentication-sources http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/auth/#other-auth... I agree that it's an absurd recommendation, however.