I seriously think you should give it another look. If you have an account with Google, Yahoo, Blogger, Wordpress, AOL .... you already have an OpenID and you could be using that one login portal to log into all the sites that support OpenID. The irony is that it is not even the bigger providers like the ones I've mentioned that offer the best security.
For most websites you log into, you have a username and a password and usually some "Forgotten Password" tool. If you're lucky the authentication will go over SSL, that is if you are logging into Gmail or Yahoo Mail or some big site like that. Most smaller sites don't use any login encryption. By using OpenID you could create an account with some of the most secure OpenID providers out there. MyOpenID.com and Certifi.ca offer login with a free SSL certificate, no need for a user name and password. Vidoop offer Picture Catergories, Email confirmation, SMS confirmation. Verisign have their PIP login with a Verisign certificate. The website you are logging into never gets a lookin on the authentication procedure. When you consider the amount of people now using Google Connect, Facebook Connect, MySpace Connect and Twitter as their single sign on provider all of which rely on a simple user name and password, I think secure SSL certificate login with OpenID is far far better.
At the end of the day the benefit to the user is that every time they visit a website with a forum or the most basic of logins, instead of having to create a new account each time, which is tedious and in the end most users end up using the same username and password, which is in itself highly insecure, they simply choose one secure provider for all their logins. If more and more website and forums are looking to account creation with OpenID then the user just has one account on their OpenID providers server and this is used to log into all websites.
OpenID is an open robust protocol, far more so than any other login mechanism out there. Check it out, implement it on this forum and give us choice at least
http://openid.net
It would be nice to see OpenID login support for this board. I hate having so many login accounts all over the web. OpenID gives one secure login for all supported websites. I've made my "Demand OpenID!" here. The phpBB people have OpenID support code in beta, here.
