Flutterby™! : Flutterby is LID enabled!

Flutterby is LID enabled!

2005-02-02 04:05:57.279442+00 by Dan Lyke 27 comments

Yowza! Flutterby is now the first LID enabled weblog, and as soon as I check these changes in will be the first LID enabled weblog system! I'm holding off on making your Flutterby login an automatic LID identity (that sounds redundant, like "ATM machine") for a number of reasons, if it seems like a good idea I do have a bunch of the code in place.

And for those of you who haven't been watching closely, LID^tm is the single sign-on and identity solution that you get to control! And I'm psyched and now want to get together with Johannes Ernst to see where we can take this!

[ related topics: Weblogs LID (Lightweight IDentity) ]

comments in ascending chronological order (reverse):

#Comment Re: made: 2005-02-02 05:02:14.494639+00 by: Mr. LID Demo User [LID/889]

And if this works, then I'm actually posting a comment with the LID^tm demo user.

#Comment Re: made: 2005-02-02 05:30:42.108649+00 by: Diane Reese

For those of us not high on the cool geek stuff foodchain, is there something we need or ought to do to enable ourselves to take part in this revolution?

#Comment Re: made: 2005-02-02 05:49:02.703236+00 by: Dan Lyke

Meuon is working on an easy system for non-techies to play with. I really should gt back and spend my next few nights programming on finally kicking this silly photo manager out the door, but as I mentioned it'd probably be an evening or three to get it so that your login at Flutterby is a LID you can use at any enabled site.

#Comment Re: made: 2005-02-02 07:29:08.736994+00 by: Mr. LID Demo User [LID/889]

You might want to get rid of the liddemo user account.

Yes, it looks like this is “single sign on” but the interface is a bit clunky. I “logged in” and then had to click over to Flutterby. Then I “logged in” to the LID demo site and I had to click over to that. I guess given the limitations of the technology it has to work this way, but … eh.

#Comment Re: made: 2005-02-02 11:44:21.847749+00 by: meuon

We picked up a check for the first commercial project yesterday that will require LID.. whether they know/understand it or not. - I'll go reset my: meuon.lidentity.org into a working config and try to login with it tonight.

#Comment Re: made: 2005-02-02 12:56:47.896277+00 by: jeff

The LID technology seems exciting and sounds like it might truly catch on. Way to go, Dan! I'd enjoy beta-testing your photo manager software ...

#Comment Re: made: 2005-02-02 15:53:56.64534+00 by: Dan Lyke

The "what do you automatically log into" is a function of your home configuration. The liddemouser account is set for an extra click on everything.

Jeff, thanks for the prodding, now that this is off my list I can make that a priority again.

#Comment Re: Can Granny use it? made: 2005-02-02 16:16:55.353593+00 by: Phil Knox

It seems like a decent idea except for that entire "URL you control" bit. In order for me to get an LID, it would currently take jumping through far too many hoops, as far as I can see, and I'm much smarter than the average bear when it comes to this sort of thing.

Am I missing something, or is this pretty much an exclusive clup for those with their own webservers?

#Comment Re: made: 2005-02-02 16:18:04.502485+00 by: Shawn

Thanks, now I've got to get off my lazy ass and set up my LID ;-)

For the record, I'd rather my Flutterby login not automatically become a LID.

#Comment Re: made: 2005-02-02 16:38:26.702519+00 by: Dan Lyke

Phil, all it takes is the ability to run a Perl CGI script. Well, that, and a number of installed modules. And one of the things I need to talk to Johannes Ernst about is cleaning up his code a bit, making a few things less problem prone.

So, yes, in practice right now it's a club, but that should change rapily.

Shawn, noted. If I go that direction (and now that Jeff is pestering me for the photo app, I'll hopefully get that shipped first) I'll definitely make it something you have to checkbox enable.

#Comment Re: Testing made: 2005-02-02 17:54:18.987179+00 by: Bryant

OK, pretty cool. I'm up at http://www.innocence.com/~durrell/ -- can't figure out how to get Flutterby to register that as a new login, though. But cool. I'm psyched by LID; I like the idea of single signon under my control.

#Comment Re: Aha! made: 2005-02-02 17:59:38.290363+00 by: Bryant [LID/890]

OK, now I'm LID-signed in. That's even keener.

#Comment Re: made: 2005-02-02 18:06:23.832728+00 by: Dan Lyke

Whoops, Bryant, I think I need to hand-edit some things. Flutterby picks up your user name from your VCARD/FN listing, and you don't have any VCARD data. Obviously we need to work through some things... Shall I add a "Bryant" to the beginning of that "[LID/890]"?

#Comment Re: made: 2005-02-02 18:40:56.469325+00 by: Bryant [LID/890]

Aha, so that's what I did wrong. If I go back and add a VCARD, will it pick it up? If not, yeah, go ahead and add the "Bryant".

#Comment Re: made: 2005-02-02 22:07:21.039259+00 by: jeff

From "prodding" for the photo app to "pestering" for it? Geez, Dan, I only sent one e-mail and one follow-up post here. *GRIN*

LID certainly has greater applicability for a greater audience ...

#Comment Re: made: 2005-02-02 23:25:32.676197+00 by: meuon

I sold it's SSO features in a 4hour dog and pony show today... and now, like all salesmen.. I gotta go describe what I sold to the 'make it work' geeks.. Oh. That's me.

#Comment Re: made: 2005-02-02 23:26:07.785158+00 by: Meuon [LID/892]

I sold it's SSO features in a 4hour dog and pony show today... and now, like all salesmen.. I gotta go describe what I sold to the 'make it work' geeks.. Oh. That's me.

#Comment Re: made: 2005-02-02 23:26:44.43118+00 by: Meuon [LID/892]

OK. It works, but I also need to add some vcard data... Meuon: Lid 892

#Comment Ok: so... made: 2005-02-06 00:01:57.321996+00 by: baylink

When will someone come up with a LID daemon that a) supports multiple users, b) is written in raw C with no .NET or similar crap and c)... runs on Win32.

Cause *that's* when it will swoop, whether we like it or not. No one said that the URL could *not* include .dyndns.org or :8081... and indeed, the program should be a dyndns client as well.

I'm not a good enough coder; who is?

And they *REALLY* need an executive summary (or an abstract of the white paper) out in the HTML of the page; the site is too cluttered, even for me, and I'm *interested*.

#Comment And, incidentally.... made: 2005-02-06 00:05:43.558213+00 by: baylink

It seems to me that the point of Identity management is that the person saying "yes, this person is who he says he is" is *not* the person saying they are who they say they are; how does LID deal with this?

It's similar to EDI: the *point* of the third party provider is that both users can tell authoritatively that a message was sent, even if the recipient didn't *receive* it -- to the extent that they trust the third party.

Clearly, I must be missing something...

#Comment Re: made: 2005-02-06 21:19:39.219625+00 by: Dan Lyke

I've been threatening to write up a piece on what I think it is, one that's a little more complete and coherent than the usual Flutterby fare. Sounds like I should get that going.

On your second point... I see two solutions to the problem of "is this person who they say they are".

This gives people a consistent place to build an identity. It means that FOAF type schemes have an identity they can use that they can freely share. One of the things I was thinking about with the whole "rel="nofollow"" thing happened was that I'd like a way to tag comment contents with that tag, and if I could use FOAF I could check to see if new users are vouched for by trusted users, without people having to give (and let me verify) email addresses.

This third party trust can be expanded to a service which you trust to tell you that a given URL is someone who's been verified.

As you point out We need to build a slightly smarter set of clients, and one of the things we need is a set of switches to tell what information we'll share with the site we're logging in to. But there's no reason that your LID URL couldn't also serve up some XML that contained credit card info in it to sites that you authorize to check for that data.

#Comment Re: made: 2005-02-06 22:57:56.711383+00 by: spc476

I had the same concerns as baylink; I have trouble seeing how LID actually confers trust. Also, in going over the current LID codebase, I had questions about the URL format being used, as I wanted to see if I could get it running in something other than Perl. The current method works, but it works because of workarounds Johannes Ernst put into the code. That scares me.

#Comment Re: made: 2005-02-07 17:04:04.581072+00 by: Dan Lyke [edit history]

I think the right way to think of the trust thing is that technology doesn't confer trust, people confer trust. LID just gives an identity to which someone else can confer trust.

On your questions, the issue you seem to be seeing is that the ?;; format for URLs isn't automatically parsed by some CGI-like environments. But the '?' as the division between the filesystem name (or whatever) and the parameters is fine, and <voice tone="crochety old man">back when I was a kid</voice> we had to write all of our own CGI parameter parsing code ourselves anyway, so it never even occurred to me that this might be a problem.

#Comment Re: made: 2005-02-07 19:09:25.361483+00 by: Mars Saxman

I keep misparsing "liddemouser" as "lid de-mouser".

Maybe that's because I've been spending most of my time working on the REALbasic debugger lately.

#Comment Well, at least hopefully made: 2005-02-08 21:57:13.161304+00 by: baylink

it's not because you spend a lot of time at www.whorepresents.com and www.agedwards.com

#Comment Re: made: 2005-02-10 21:10:55.655335+00 by: Dan Lyke

I'll see that and raise you our very own newsedition.

#Comment Yes, I got an inlink made: 2005-02-13 04:18:47.493528+00 by: baylink

from the syndie blog; I'd been wondering why I'd have been linked from LJ; I didn't realize you syndicated.

But, back on topic: yes, please do that write-up. At the wiki is fine; no doubt you noticed I've been coming along behind you, (doing what I think is) cleaning up your thinking (or expression thereof).

But we still haven't gotten to the fundamental item yet:

*What does LID *tell* about you?*

As far as I can see, the only thing it can currently do it tie multiple visits from you to the same PGP/GPG key (since you're signing with the private key, right?), but it says nothing about who you are IRL. And ISTM that he needs to at least *envision* some ways that this could be useful IRL; his White Paper is the closest thing so far, and it meanders *far* too much.

In short: I like the general decentralized and URL based idea, but we have to nail down how useful it could be by analogy to what goes on *now*.

I'll be glad to contribute to that, if there's interest; big-picture systems thinking is the think I (like to think I) do well, but there's rarely call for it in the open-source world. I'll start noodling at the wiki, someone is expected to come along close behind and wipe my butt.