On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 7:08 PM, Jon Davis <wiki(a)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