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MyOpenID To Shut Down In February

kriston writes with news about an email sent to myOpenID users letting them know that it will be shut down February 1, 2014. The email reads:" Hello,

I wanted to reach out personally to let you know that we have made the decision to end of life the myOpenID service. myOpenID will be turned off on February 1, 2014.

In 2006 Janrain created myOpenID to fulfill our vision to make registration and login easier on the web for people. Since that time, social networks and email providers such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn and Yahoo! have embraced open identity standards. And now, billions of people who have created accounts with these services can use their identities to easily register and login to sites across the web in the way myOpenID was intended.

By 2009 it had become obvious that the vast majority of consumers would prefer to utilize an existing identity from a recognized provider rather than create their own myOpenID account. As a result, our business focus changed to address this desire, and we introduced social login technology. While the technology is slightly different from where we were in 2006, I'm confident that we are still delivering on our initial promise – that people should take control of their online identity and are empowered to carry those identities with them as they navigate the web.

For those of you who still actively use myOpenID, I can understand your disappointment to hear this news and apologize if this causes you any inconvenience. To reduce this inconvenience, we are delaying the end of life of the service until February 1, 2014 to give you time to begin using other identities on those sites where you use myOpenID today.

Speaking on behalf of Janrain, I truly appreciate your past support of myOpenID.

Sincerely,
Larry


Larry Drebes, CEO, Janrain, Inc. "

14 of 78 comments (clear)

  1. Holy summarization, Batman! by Samantha+Wright · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You'd think this would be a great time to use that "read more" snip feature that's typical of reviews and interviews... or maybe this is a cue to start using Larry Drebes's signature everywhere?

    At any rate, it's a little sad to see this OpenID provider going because it means less diversity in the single sign-on landscape, which is the whole point. At least OpenID itself will still be around!

    Sincerely,
    Larry


    Larry Drebes, CEO, Janrain, Inc.

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    1. Re:Holy summarization, Batman! by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Also means you can look forward to identifying yourself through the services of a company known to track your information for marketing and other purposes.

      Yay. :-|

      --

      A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    2. Re:Holy summarization, Batman! by TheSeatOfMyPants · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It also means that since those networks generally don't let us log onto their networks using OpenID, we're stuck keeping track of which identity/account we used to log into each other website -- "let's see, did I use my user1 Gmail account, or was it the user2 Yahoo account, or maybe Facebook or...man, hope it wasn't site/service X, Y or Z because those don't even exist anymore...maybe I used Discus that time..."

      Especially as the big commercial data-mining services don't let us set up multiple identities/personal info/userpics so we can use whichever seems the most appropriate. (Yeah, what a shock...not.) I liked being able to control whether I'm "seatofmypants" or "[insert real name]" or something else entirely, not having Google decide (as it does on all of its connected properties, pissing me off) that I *must* be known by my supposed real name, not the one I actually chose to suit my personality or life.

      FWIW I use MyOpenID a couple of times each month, and haven't run into server problems.

      --
      Now mostly at Usenet:comp.misc & SoylentNews.org (it's made of people!)
    3. Re:Holy summarization, Batman! by maple_shaft · · Score: 3, Informative

      Thanks Larry for providing a service I've been using for a long time. However, while it's not written in TFS, there may be another reason while myOpenID was not that popular: reliability? It is rather annoying when one cannot login to a bunch of sites because myOpenID is unreachable...

      A thousand times THIS.

      My first and only experiences with MyOpenID was for authenticating to StackExchange, but it was quite possibly one of the buggiest and most unreliable services I ever had the displeasure to use. It was nearly a laugh but really a cry. I switched and never looked back. I certainly am not surprised nor am I crying a river over their demise.

  2. Just to be clear by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    This isn't the same as OpenID, the one run by the OpenID foundation. This is a random for profit company that I would wager not to many people have heard of. The company is still providing user integration software.

    1. Re:Just to be clear by Jonner · · Score: 5, Informative

      This isn't the same as OpenID, the one run by the OpenID foundation. This is a random for profit company that I would wager not to many people have heard of. The company is still providing user integration software.

      OpenID is an open standard which has been implemented by many sites, one of which is myOpenID. myOpenID was one of the earliest OpenID services. Lots of companies now provide OpenIDs for anyone with an account. However, the overall vision of having one OpenID with which one can log in to all one's online accounts hasn't happened. You can't use your Google account to log in to Facebook or your Microsoft account to log in to Twitter. It's not really surprising janrain is giving up.

  3. *shrug* by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    <link rel="openid.server" href="http://www.myopenid.com/server">
    <link rel="openid.delegate" href="http://anoncoward.myopenid.com/">
    <!-- What this says is that this web page in question is owned by the owner of delegate (that is, anoncoward) and furthermore server (the OpenID provider actually) may be used to verify ownership of delegate.-->
    <!-- When you wish to change the OpenID provider, you simply change these two lines. At your own website. Thus you don't have to worry about either running your own OpenID server, or having one shutting down on you (as you can easily switch). -->

  4. Re:Verbified by hawguy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What rock have you been living under? I can assure you that "End of lifed" has been a common software development term for more than a decade. You've probably encountered it as EOL'd and mistakenly thought it meant "end of lined." (Either that or you haven't entered the workforce yet, because if you work for a company that produces software, I guarantee you that your company uses the term.)

    Of if you work for any company that owns EOL'ed equipment that you want to keep in service, you'll quickly learn that EOL is a fancy way of saying "Sure, you can buy a service contract for that - but it'll cost you. A lot. So much that you may as well buy a new one."

  5. Re:I'd pay by lister+king+of+smeg · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The best to have way to do that would be to host your own openID server, in fact I have been looking at setting up an openid server for personal use on my home sever but there don't seem to be many actively maintained standalone and easy to administer openid packages out there. Anyone else on slashdot know of any or have any tips on setting up an openid server?

    --
    ---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
  6. Re:News For Nerds, Indeed... by Narcocide · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A little used system that few people even know about is shutting down.

    Sure, but you shouldn't be so judgmental. The same thing has also likely been said of the likes of Usenet, and AltaVista. The same thing might easily be said about Slashdot one day. Those who live in glass houses should not throw rocks at glass houses.

  7. Re:I'd pay by CastrTroy · · Score: 3, Informative

    You don't even need to set up an OpenID server. Set up a url, put the delegate tags to point to some other server that handles all the delegation. When stackoverflow.com starting using OpenID for authentication, MyOpenID was their recommended provider. I read up a bit before signing up and figured out how to do delegation from my own domain name. Now that OpenID is shutting down, I could set up my own server, but I could also just point the delegate information to another OpenID server, or point it to StackExchange, which has become it's own OpenID provider.

    --

    Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
  8. No mention of their admin apathy by Dagger2 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I received this email earlier today. It made no mention of the fact that generating new SSL certificates for certificate authentication on their website broke years ago, and nobody could be bothered to fix it. It's still broken, in fact. I'm guessing their decision to shut it down was more out of apathy than anything else.

  9. Re:I'd pay by lister+king+of+smeg · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You don't even need to set up an OpenID server. Set up a url, put the delegate tags to point to some other server that handles all the delegation. When stackoverflow.com starting using OpenID for authentication, MyOpenID was their recommended provider. I read up a bit before signing up and figured out how to do delegation from my own domain name. Now that OpenID is shutting down, I could set up my own server, but I could also just point the delegate information to another OpenID server, or point it to StackExchange, which has become it's own OpenID provider.

    I have thought of doing that but but then openID providers come and go as seen by the subject of this thread. Also I don't want to use others as they can be used by the provider to, effectively, track you web usage. As my goal is to be A) independent of others services and B) to not be tracked on the web using a openid referrer does not mesh with my goals.

    --
    ---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
  10. Re:Meh- almost just acknowledgement of status quo by BitZtream · · Score: 3, Informative

    ...

    Running your own openid server is rather simple if you're willing to install some packages.

    For fucks sake, a simple google search results in the following first link: http://wiki.openid.net/w/page/12995226/Run%20your%20own%20identity%20server

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