Open Web Foundation Launched

Six Apart’s David Recordon announced the creation of the Open Web Foundation at the OSCON Open Source Convention. The Open Web Foundation is a meta-standards organization dedicated to smoothing the way for large businesses to embrace open web standards like OAuth, OpenID, etc. Following the open source model similar to the Apache Software Foundation, the foundation is aimed at building a lightweight framework to help communities deal with the legal requirements necessary to create successful and widely adopted specification. View Recordan's OSCON presentation.

Should we care about open web standards like OpenID and OAuth? Yes, according to Mashable's Rob Diana:

OpenID and OAuth are needed for a better user experience. OpenID solves the problem of having far too many usernames and passwords to remember. OAuth solves the problem of how to share information between sites without giving your password from one site to another. Together the technologies may make things simpler for the user. Thankfully, users do not need to do anything to take advantage of these technologies. The one thing users can do is email the support team of each of your favorite sites and make sure they support OpenID and OAuth.

See also Mashable's Poll: How Often Do You Use OpenID to Login? [JH]

[JH]