SourceForge has implemented OpenId, and as you can read here, they’re very proud of it.
You’ve been asking for it, and now you get it – SourceForge.net has implemented OpenID. It’s a great way to let you cutting-edge web users to more easily get involved on our site. This helps you participate in the Open Source community – whether you’re helping out in project trackers, starting a new project, or just throwing down in the Community forums. We’re helping you to help us help you some more.
As we all know, the main and greatest advantage of OpenId is that it’s one centralized identity provider, so that you don’t have to have thousands logins/passwords for each and every website you use.
Well, it looks like not everyone understands that.
I wanted to login to aforementioned site to be able to post comment on one project’s forum. Their login/create account page looks like this:
Can you see, the right-side window? It says – “Log in with OpenId”. Notice also the “OpenId eliminates…” text below.
I did all the required steps, and instead of being logged in, and able to post to forum, I saw this:
Why does it ask me to create an account? What’s the point of using OpenId, if I still have to create another SF account with another SF login and another SF password. And no – the fact that I don’t have to provide them the next time I ‘log in’ with my OpenId is not a justification.
This is the purest form of abuse of OpenId I’ve ever seen, and having slogans like “OpenID eliminates the need for multiple usernames across different websites, simplifying your online experience.” is just laughing in the face of a user.
Comments
That’s strange. I hope it’s some kind of intermediate state. On the other hand, I wonder what is the other way for a service provider to enforce filling some fields that are normally required during the registering process. Imagine such a situations: suppose I’m running a website for cat lovers, and I require for each user to tell me the color of his cat when registering. How do I enforce that once I want to use OpenID?
AFAIK, OpenId allows custom fields in personas, so you could demand users to provide OpenId persona with field ‘Cat color’. Alternatively you might ask your users upon first registration to provide just this piece of information and associate it with their OpenId.
I’m sure there’s an elegant solution to that 🙂