Any developer and proponent of a truly Open web must take an active roll in pushing for the success of OpenID.

In my view this is an area where one cannot be on the side lines, we have to take an active roll in making sure that members identities and their data are owned by members and not companies that want to lock in with proprietary solutions.

So interesting that a short time ago Microsoft (A closed source company) wanted to push forward a standard (Passport) that would have give users the ability to have one log in that worked for many sites. At the time many in the tech and development community saw this as just another Microsoft Land Grab for our Identity and our Content. Many people saw Passport as a Microsoft effort to finally gain control of the internet by becoming the standard for digital identity.

Today we have no less than 3 closed source companies in a race to become the “Standard” for holding or Identity and therefore having access to the content that we read and the content that we creates.

All of this at a time when there are many Open Source standards that could be used (Openid is just one that comes to mind) that if properly deployed would do the right thing by putting the user/member in charge of their log in as well as their relationships across many sites.

Have we forgotten the lesson of the not so distance past ?

Why do we not see a problem with the big 3 trying to become the proprietary standard in this very important area ?

Why do developers especially Open Source developers continue to build and extend applications for closed source companies that under mind open source standards and ideals ?

Why do users continue to view giving control of their identity and content to these companies as a win, when in fact the win is clearly on the side of the company that you have allowed to take control of your identity and to generate value and revenue from your content. In return for our compliance we do not even have a right to take our identity and our content where we want.