Sxip: a new authentication and user-base for Bugzilla

[Andy Smith]

Hey folks,

For the impatient who already know about Sxip, a demo is at
http://an9.org/bugs (you will have to register with demohomesite.com,
first, otherwise you probably won't know what is going on) and click
log in. If all goes well once you sxip in you will have a new account
on the site ready to post bugs with.

I just wrote a chunk of code to integrate Sxip authentication with
Bugzilla. Sxip, since many of you probably haven't heard of it yet (it
is quite new, but growing fast), is an open, distributed, platform for
personal digital identity management (kind of like Passport but cooler
and not evil). More info at https://sxip.org.

Basically, where it fits in with Bugzilla, it is single sign-on for
the web with verifiable (cert signed xml) user data transmission. This
lets a user arrive at a site for the first time and give verifiable
evidence that he is who he says he his (at this point this is limited
to an email address, but it scales to much more) so that he does not
have to register a new account on that site. So, in Bugzilla, this
means when a new users come to submit a bug they can simply log in
without having to first register their email address (email +
confirmation that we all hate).

I have set up a demo of the code at http://an9.org/bugs, but you will
need to register an account at https://demohomesite.com first to test
it out.  Once you've done that, click Log In on the demo and then Sxip
In.

The code itself  is available at http://an9.org/data/sxip-bugzilla.tgz
along with some more in-depth documentation and diagrams.

The current implementation is mostly a proof of concept, as my
knowledge of the Bugzilla code is mostly limited to the few hours I
spent on this project, but if I get some positive feedback from this
it could develop into a very useful thing.

Imagine a world where you no longer have to go through a new
registration process for every project you want to submit a bug for,
or remember which email address you used as your login. Sounds pretty
nice to me. (P.S. Mailman is next on my list.)

Anyway, there's everything for your talented persual. Any comments,
questions, or assistance are welcome, more contact info on me is
available on my wiki at http://an9.org/w/AndySmith.

Thanks. 
- Andy