We launched Mozilla Labs’ online identity experiment, BrowserID, only 24 hours ago, and the feedback has been incredibly useful already. At Mozilla, we believe in empowering individuals to shape their online experience. Our work on a decentralized identity solution for the Web matches that mission well. Also, because we believe that transparent community-based processes promote participation, accountability, and trust, we will be posting technical explanations, points of debate, and roadmaps on this blog.
One important question we immediately received from early adopters is how BrowserID compares to OpenID. Both projects have three important common goals:
(a) make it easier and safer for users to log in to web sites by reducing the number of passwords they have to remember,
(b) make it easier for web sites to add authentication features, and
(c) accomplish all of this in existing modern browsers.
Beyond these similarities, we think Mozilla Labs’ BrowserID project provides a few key advantages over OpenID. Lloyd Hilaiel has written an excellent technical primer on BrowserID, which highlights our key design goals. These have led us to three key differences.
via Identity at Mozilla – How BrowserID differs from OpenID. Some really impressive work from the team at Mozilla, defiantly simpler to get started and using than OpenID and eliminates the which OpenID provider did I use for this site.