Re: Gnome to be based on .NET?

["Tom Caudron" <tom_caudron hotmail com>]

Sean Middleditch said, "Heck, if the Open Source community could form a very
powerful/fast/secure authentication server for .Net, and *advertised* it
properly (Free Software never does that enough, or least, they idiotically
advertise to their existing users) any large on-line service would offer
both Hailstorm authentication *and* auth against the Open database."

At this point we are /way/ off topic, but since you mentioned it, here's
your open source authentication service that competes with MS Passport, AOL
Magic Carpet, etc....

http://www.xns.org/

So far, one company (http://www.onename.com) has established a server using
the open XNS protocol.

There is not one thing standing in the way of a developer making a .NET app
that uses this web-based authentication service instead of Passport.
Passport is not ingrained in the .NET architecture except in so far as their
marketers can convince you that it is.  In fact, this service screams for a
.NET api.  Perhaps Mono could provide that.

It's also worth noting that the service provided (purportedly?) by Passport
and other similar services is a valuable and needed one.  Non-repudiation is
the first step towrds a trust-based architecture and a trust-based
architecture is the first step toward real p2p business-class services.  In
the end, it has to be done if real commerce is going to occur online.  I
hope MS stays in the authentication market, as I hope AOL does and OneName
and many others.  Competition breeds competence.  Personally, I chose
OneName as my authentication service.  Bear in mind that these
infrastructures don't come free.  Someone has to pay, and it's likely to be
us (until such time as a non-repudiatable authentication server can be run
by individuals...which is a VERY long way off).

Tom Caudron
XNS Name "=Tom Caudron"