When I complained and asked “where was 6A in all this announcement propaganda?” I knew I would draw a response from Anil Dash - even if I didn’t post it on my VOX blog (which is how I REALLY know I’ll get the attention of the 6A crowd.)

So Anil proudly spells out all the code and commitment 6A have made to OpenID - but he skirts the point.

By me asking “where is SixApart?” - what I meant was:

- “why isn’t SixApart part of this announcement?”
- “why doesn’t SixApart help us promote the notion of OpenID? Simply supporting it is not enough!”
- and as Anil admits “why can’t SixApart devote any resources - at all - towards this effort?”

Its a subtle issue, but important. Educating the world has to be a proactive effort. Simply providing support for OpenID - in different forms and levels of support across different platforms - provides no comprehensive architecture, strategy or nothing more than support for some ‘technology du jour’.

What we need from SixApart is the opposite of what’s going on.

We need a clear statement, from the CEO of the company, that states that this stuff really matters, that there’s a strategy and architecture in place and that it’s being supported not as some second hand thought, but as a comprehensive, open strategy and policy.

I’ve been asking for clear intentions from Anil - going on four years now. He points to SixApart’s support and creation of Atom and of the original hegemony of Moveable Type. Anil has even complained to me that others don’t give 6A credit for all their fine open code and contributions they make. I’ve tried to stress how important it is to have SixApart - up on stage - in the press releases - openly providing leadership.

So that’s what I’m asking for. “Does SixApart care enough about OpenID to pick up some leadership reins and help us ride this pony?”

Is OpenID part of SixApart’s long term vision? Does SixApart even HAVE a long term vision - that they’re willing to share with ‘the rest of us’?

Or is supporting OpenID easy enough - and you GOTTA do it - ’cause Brad still works for you - and its easy enough to support it - with almost not effort - and Hey - its the technology du jour and it makes us look cool. Is that what’s up?

Well looking cool ain’t good enough. IMHO.

If we want to give LiveJournal users the ability to access their data - via the LJ APIs - we cannot use OpenID to do that - as of today. I’d like that to get improved. We’ve asked for that - for over a year now.

And while I’m at it - when WILL those VOX APIs be made available - anyway?

Don’t get me wrong - I love Anil - and I love SixApart - but I wonder why it’s always Anil who’s the mouth piece. Shouldn’t CEOs pay attention to this sort of stuff?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 7th, 2007 at 12:58 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.