On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 7:08 PM, Jon Davis wiki@konsoletek.com wrote:
I could see some real use cases for OAuth. Especially with regards to the cases mentioned above. People could potentially build apps like AWB and Huggle using OAuth. In general I think this would be a "cool thing" to have for all MediaWiki installs.
As for being an OpenID provider... only one major thought: Having this Foundation be a provider would be a lot of additional server load (It is 100% non-cacheable) without any benefit to the main goal of providing free information.
The biggest immediate benefit to becoming a provider is for non-MediaWiki based apps that the foundation uses. If we become a provider, our Wordpress, Bugzilla, Ideatorrent, etc. apps don't need to have separate username/password databases. As someone mentioned earlier, it would be extremely useful for the toolserver.
Even for third-party applications, if we just provide OAuth, they would still need to handle user account databases, and that isn't optimal. It is especially less optimal for WMF users, who would need to have user accounts in a number of spots, and possibly have to remember multiple passwords.
Respectfully,
Ryan Lane