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So, how to do we revive Persona? I mean, it's still around, but it's been kind of back-burnered by Mozilla. The odd thing is that I didn't even know it existed

So, how to do we revive Persona? I mean, it's still around, but it's been kind of back-burnered by Mozilla. The odd thing is that I didn't even know it existed until this whole conversation about Google dropping OpenID came up...and I use Firefox as my browser across all my devices, I use sync, I use Thunderbird, I follow the Firefox OS development with interest, and yet, I had no idea Persona was a thing. I've always been uncomfortable with Google and Facebook being my "identity" provider, and I've been equally uncomfortable with the fact that they would happily provide those authentication services but won't accept them (i.e. I can login to thousands of services using my Google or Facebook account, but I can't login to Google or Facebook with any other service account). I simply don't like Google and Facebook owning my online life, but the convenience of it often trumps the ethical and privacy implications. I have, thus far, avoided integrating Google or Facebook logins on my sites because of the ethical implications, but I hate making my users keep up with passwords and usernames. Why aren't more websites supporting Persona? For my part, I plan to integrate Persona into the next version of my company website launching early this year, as well as our wiki and blogs. I may even try to figure out how to fit it into our products, somehow. I found the following, seemingly maintained, extensions for Persona support in the apps I use for the websites I maintain: https://www.drupal.org/project/persona https://www.drupal.org/project/persona https://wordpress.org/plugins/browserid/ https://wordpress.org/plugins/browserid/ https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Persona https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Persona

scrollaway 12y ago
> So, how to do we revive Persona? I mean, it's still around, but it's been kind of back-burnered by Mozilla. Push for it. Implement it anyway. Work on it and write to Mozilla giving your thoughts about it. Whenever authentication is mentioned on HN, write about Persona and why it's still relevant. That's the best you and I can do. Best of luck, we'll need it...
nickbauman 12y ago
I wrote an Mozilla Persona integration in Clojure with Tom Marble (of the OpenJDK evangelist fame at Sun) and friends at the Clojure.MN meetup a few years ago, here: https://github.com/tmarble/nongrata https://github.com/tmarble/nongrata. It was actually a snap to implement. I did most of the coding at it took me maybe a few hours total and I NO idea what I was doing at the time. So if you want to USE Persona or integrate with Mozilla's implementation, there's nothing stopping you. Writing the full stack of a Persona implementation is a many week to several month job for a half a dozen member team not only for development but from an infosec point of view.
- coding4all 12y ago
  Tom Marble is a great guy. Thanks for making this!
- StavrosK 12y ago
  On the provider site of the equation, I wrote an "identity provider as a service" app that you can just drop in to your existing domain by adding a single file: https://persowna.net/ https://persowna.net/ It allows all your users to log in to Persona-supporting sites with their @yourdomain.com address, bypassing the bridge, and supports various nifty features like catch-alls, two-factor auth, etc.
ecaron 12y ago
> So, how to do we revive Persona? I mean, it's still around, but it's been kind of back-burnered by Mozilla. Come up with a way to market it that makes sense to your mother in under 10 seconds. The "why the heck is this better than the Facebook button" is something Mozilla marketing couldn't crack, and until that gets solved you can't get the "who the heck is Bruce Schneier" crowd to switch.
- scrollaway 12y ago
  Users are not the ones that Persona needs to be marketed to. Users will click whatever the website present to them.

scrollaway 12y ago

> So, how to do we revive Persona? I mean, it's still around, but it's been kind of back-burnered by Mozilla. Push for it. Implement it anyway. Work on it and write to Mozilla giving your thoughts about it. Whenever authentication is mentioned on HN, write about Persona and why it's still relevant. That's the best you and I can do. Best of luck, we'll need it...

nickbauman 12y ago

I wrote an Mozilla Persona integration in Clojure with Tom Marble (of the OpenJDK evangelist fame at Sun) and friends at the Clojure.MN meetup a few years ago, here: https://github.com/tmarble/nongrata https://github.com/tmarble/nongrata. It was actually a snap to implement. I did most of the coding at it took me maybe a few hours total and I NO idea what I was doing at the time. So if you want to USE Persona or integrate with Mozilla's implementation, there's nothing stopping you. Writing the full stack of a Persona implementation is a many week to several month job for a half a dozen member team not only for development but from an infosec point of view.

coding4all 12y ago
Tom Marble is a great guy. Thanks for making this!
StavrosK 12y ago
On the provider site of the equation, I wrote an "identity provider as a service" app that you can just drop in to your existing domain by adding a single file: https://persowna.net/ https://persowna.net/ It allows all your users to log in to Persona-supporting sites with their @yourdomain.com address, bypassing the bridge, and supports various nifty features like catch-alls, two-factor auth, etc.

ecaron 12y ago

> So, how to do we revive Persona? I mean, it's still around, but it's been kind of back-burnered by Mozilla. Come up with a way to market it that makes sense to your mother in under 10 seconds. The "why the heck is this better than the Facebook button" is something Mozilla marketing couldn't crack, and until that gets solved you can't get the "who the heck is Bruce Schneier" crowd to switch.

scrollaway 12y ago
Users are not the ones that Persona needs to be marketed to. Users will click whatever the website present to them.