this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2023
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Fediverse

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Hi folks! Today I have asked myself if I could login with one (no, not google or apple or micosoft) account in all the (30 I think) forums that I have to use as a FOSS admin. Nextcloud Forum, Ubuntu Forum, Mint forum, Makemkv Forum, Papermc Forum, linux.org, etc.

We obviously are on a forum-like social platform but we cant make people use this as their forum I suppose. Ideally, I'd like to federate "all forums" so to speak but that would probably take a shit ton of work. https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/does-this-forum-use-activitypub/2545/2

If not federate the content, maybe federate the logins. So that the profiles federate from one place to the next and you can login anywhere without having 30 different passwords for one "service" (forum in this case).

The next step down would be a foss SSO solution. There seem to be some but I hardly see any pages mention them possibility at all. https://sennovate.com/best-open-source-single-sign-on-solutions/

Am I missing something or is this still in the distant future?

Thanks for reading. Have a good one.

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[–] vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Who would you trust with supplying identity services?

If you don’t trust Google, or Apple, or Microsoft, the biggest email providers in the world (ie where you send your activation links), why on god’s green earth would you trust some rando on the web?

[–] haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

You mean „cant“. You cant trust them. Someone actually put this very well. You could login everywhere with public keys instead of passwords and usernames. I mean, you can’t yet but the idea was neat.

[–] vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

You could login everywhere with public keys instead of passwords and usernames. I mean, you can’t yet but the idea was neat

You certainly can. Look up client side certificates.

[–] haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 1 points 11 months ago

Will do! Thank you.

[–] isaac@microblog.lakora.us 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

@haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com I've implemented the "log in with Microsoft", "log in with Google", etc buttons in ASP.NET Core + Identity before - most of them just use OAuth2, which works pretty much the same way no matter what provider you're using.

OpenID Connect is an authorization layer built on top of OAuth2, so it could give you information about the user beyond just "they logged in and here's an access token". Maybe an OpenID Connect provider would be helpful in this use case - it seems to be designed to solve a problem much like this.

[–] haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 1 points 11 months ago

Thanks! This information is very helpful. Now we just need everyone to use it. :)

[–] agressivelyPassive@feddit.de 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I would be happy with a fediverse-spanning login.

When you stumble upon a link to any instance apart from your own, you basically can't do anything, except manually copy/paste/edit the link so that it's opened via your home instance.

[–] haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 1 points 11 months ago

Yes. That is my issue as well but I‘m somewhat ok with that. The real issue for me are forums as they are even more seperated and miss critical info others have.

Example: For linux, you can use linux.org, adminzone or others and you need to search them individually and to ask a question, you need to register at each of them and hope its the one with the person who has your solution.

On that note, maybe there are search engines that can be instructed to only search a handful forums per topic. That would be awesome.