[Auth]Re: pesky vendors

[Kurt L. Sussman]

Ron Burk <address@hidden> wrote:
> If the idea is successful on the web page writer side,
> then a lot of web sites will have some kind of insignia
> that indicates they support the dotGNU standard. That's
> an important part of the equation.

Yes, and that will be very helpful, but not 'viral' in that it probably
won't result in exponential growth (like Hotmail saw when including a
little ad at the bottom of all outgoing emails).

> >'When they upgrade' is what 'instantly' means, right? #:)
> 
> True, although that's appreciably more vendors spending
> more money and effort to get people to use a dotGNU standard
> than schemes that don't involve those pesky vendors :-).

Yes, other people spending money to promote a free product is a good
thing.

> That probably is generous -- do you know how many people
> 5% of the Windows market is? My guess is that Passport is
> currently used in far less than 5% of all login activity on the
> web.

With the tech slump, the introduction of XP on new machines probably
won't change the world in 3 months, but I think you'll see more Passport
traffic (if not actual transactions with 3rd-party sites) in about 6
months, given that MS is planning to push XP out next week to beat DoJ
to the punch.

> Thin compared to offering one of the alternative schemes that
> have been discussed here? None of those alternative schemes
> provided for any marketing effort whatsoever.

I agree; this plan will bring in a sizable installed base fairly
rapidly. I'm comparing with Passport, though, because if the site
maintainers are going to support two single-login systems, there has to
be a big enough market or the ROI isn't there. And now that dotcoms
actually have to make money, that's a serious consideration.

> We're really just expressing different opinions about the
> possibility of success at this point, but it's difficult to see the
> argument that this scheme might have less success in the
> marketplace than alternatives that really haven't focussed
> on the marketplace at all.

You're right. I'm being selfish; I want this on my platform(s), not just
on Windows. But Windows is where the majority of users are now, and
they're more likely to reward the form-filler software vendors
financially than the Linux crowd.

> >Have any of these venfors been contacted? How do they respond to the
> >idea of poking Microsoft in the eye (by competing with Passport)?
> 
> I kinda doubt these folks are too worried about angering Microsoft
> (you have to reach a certain size before Microsoft's clout really
> matters -- they treat all the little people fairly equally badly :-).

You're right, of course. I hadn't looked at it that way.

> >If the vendors want to participate, they could help pump up the user
> >base in the early stages.
> 
> It's the entire ecosystem that matters here. Attracting the web page
> monkeys is at least as critical as signing up the vendors. That's why
> it's important that the mechanism be accessible to even the most
> non-technical creator of web pages.

OK, then the HTML editor vendors should be contacted next, so they can
include templates for building dotGNU-compatible forms, right? And once
there's a working client, we(*) need to write articles for all the web
design sites on building and using dotGNU-compatible forms.

> Passport, of course, cannot sign up any additional client support --
> Microsoft wants to own the client.

But the client is any javascript-enabled browser, isn't it? With the
documented browser-compatibility bugs, of course.

> Passport is having trouble signing up server side support -- it's not
> truly trivial for web page designers to implement, requires getting
> permission from Microsoft, and holds the promise of getting taxed by
> Microsoft in the future for the privilege of supporting their
> "standard".

Some big vendors will buy in, and Microsoft will probably 'comp' a
couple of big sites (msnbc for sure) just to be sure there's pressure on
other big sites. They're very good at bringing new products to market.

> There's still a chance to threaten Passport, IMO. This idea has the
> best chance of doing that, from a strictly marketing perspective (but
> that's still nothing but opinion, of course).

I respect your views, and I hope you're right even though the XP
schedule has been pushed up. Yours was the first adult voice I read on
the subject of the design, and I'm glad to see you're staying with it.

(*) I'm considering taking Mr. Scherbinsky's sage advice ("go away"),
since I'm clearly not contributing anything, and I have plenty of
profitable work to do. I'll make my decision in two weeks.

--Kurt
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