Dave Winer says that he intends to support the Six Apart API if and when he gets his hands on it. He proceeds to explain that the API would support his existing membership system in Radio. He then says that somebody is going to say that he should be using LDAP. Finally, he says that I might have something to say about such a proposal.
I do.
I have been a long time proponent of minimizing the number of namespaces we use everyday. One way of minimizing namespaces is to use a namespace service like LDAP when building systems. Unfortunately, LDAP services are not ubiquitous enough to be a real choice for a common directory. LDAP as a standard has not produced wide spread availability of LDAP as a service that developers can depend on.
As a result–at least for the forseable future–we will continue to see more namespaces being created for systems. It is a good thing if UserLand and Six Apart can work together to minimize the impact of such proliferation. I doubt Dave could successfully use LDAP as an alternative with any real success.
