With voting closing on Christmas Eve, there is just over a week left to vote for the OpenID board.  Personally, I have been meaning to join the OpenID foundation for some time.  Having the opportunity to vote for the incoming board pushed me to finally do it.

Although I really like OpenID, I am critical of it.  Why?  Because trust is not baked-in. 

This makes it hard for a Relying Party (RP) to determine if an OpenID comes from a trustworthy Identity Provider (IP).  I believe this is the fundamental roadblock to the big services becoming RPs.  My eyes roll to the back of my head whenever I hear users criticize services for not accepting arbitrary OpenIDs. (More here: OpenID and the Relying Party Patchwork).

This roadblock is a problem for the OpenID technologists to solve. 

The confused users is another problem altogether.  While I am a bit skeptical of the motives behind demanding OpenID adoption without solving this trust problem first, OpenID does have a real problem with an inaccurate market perception. 

So, I decided to vote.  There are 17 nominees and each member gets 7 votes.  I have not decided who I will vote for, but my votes will go to those who see these as top priorities of the foundation.  I am mainly basing my votes on the candidate statements (https://openid.net/foundation/members/elections/1 for members).  If you aren’t a member, you can see the complete list of nominees at ReadWriteWeb. 

Tentatively, here are my yes votes . . .

• Nat Sakimura:  He lists Trust relationship and reputation as barriers to adoption.
• David Recordon:  Unfortunately, aside from his obvious credentials he doesn’t say what he thinks are important for the foundation.  He has probably written this elsewhere — I’ll have move past his statement.
• Same for Joseph Smarr and Scott Kveton
• Johannes Ernst: He talks about “mainstream sites” and relying parties, not just users.
• Chris Messina:  I respect his work and certainly like what he says about usability — he doesn’t mention relying parties though.

What am I missing (besides a 7th vote)?  Am I wrong about the priorities?  Should my votes go elsewhere?