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There's Mozilla's Browser ID, which is uses nowhere....

Your point about the large players not wanting to play well with others is well taken, but if you mean that Mozilla's BrowserID/Persona is not used anywhere, it is still relatively new.

From what I gather Persona best fits the desires of most FLOSS advocates.

There's Mozilla's Browser ID, which is uses nowhere....Google, Yahoo, et al seem to have been 'bundled' into the Disqus 'platform' across various sites. I think it's more that no one wants to give up 'control' of their user data and associated metrics to a single open standard. By forcing users to continue to sign up for their 'services' they get to collect whatever they want through the use of EULAs, ToS', etc. For their own ends, of course.

https://www.browserid.org/

It's the closest I've seen to SSH Keys. That's all I want, SSH Keys for web auth.

You know what's even better? Not requiring creating an account at all.

Absolutely. But then you're faced with the problem of dealing with large quantities of spam. Captchas etc. can block most stuff but if people can find a way to post something to site they'll happily pay people to do that for them. You can use spam filters (Akismet etc.) and however many other. But then you find yourself spending a lot more time on beating spam than providing things for your users.

I wish there was some nice built-in standard in browsers to support log in without handing over personal details. BrowserID looked like it might do it - if coupled with a throwaway email - but now they've rebranded that to Mozilla Persona there is zero chance of it becoming cross-browser.

Your end isn't the problem. It's the social site's end that's the problem. If I want to use your site even despite requiring an account somewhere, why in the world would I want to bring a third party into it and allow them to know every time I log into your site? That's just between you and me.

I completely agree myself. I would never log into a site with an account from another site for exactly that reason - the thing most people would. It's the old security vs. convenience decision.

Also, OpenID allows for more then just login -- it's extended for "profile exchange" and more. Ideal for Google, and all large companies, unlike https://browserid.org/ or other schemes.

I like browserid, atleast when it gets out of the beta-stage (which it should in the coming months):

https://browserid.org/about
http://identity.mozilla.com/post/7616727542/introducing-browserid-a-better-way-to-sign-in

It is a quick and easy way to verify you are the owner of an email-address and an open specification.

Then Firefox will get it in the browser-UI, here is an old mockup:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/images/4/4c/IdentityInTheBrowser.png

Firefox still has about 25% of the market, if those users get an easy way to login to sites that should help with adoption.

This submission looks like typical content farm / blogspam junk so here's some useful links instead:

• The BrowserID main page: https://www.browserid.org/
• Mozilla Identity Team's blog: http://identity.mozilla.com/
• Source Code: https://github.com/mozilla/browserid