Mozilla Halts its Development of Persona Authentication System

Over the years Google has started and then abandoned so mamy projects that some people like to say that the company "throws spaghetti at the wall to see what will stick." Now, as Mozilla is shifting its entire company strategy toward mobile technology and focusing on its Firefox OS platform, it may be heading in a similar direction. After touting and actively testing its Persona authentication and sign-on system, the company is stepping down its participation in the project, citing low adoption.

Persona was created primarily to make it easier to sign in to websites, and Mozilla officials frequently referred to it as a "web-scale identity system." Mozilla has posted a summary of what it got right and what it could have done better with Persona, distilled from a lot of different conversations with people inside and outside of the core team.

"Persona's community has stepped up to lead Persona's development. This includes both long-term volunteers and former paid contributors, all of whom deeply believe in Persona's unique vision for decentralised authentication," Mozilla's Dan Callahan said in a blog post.

Notably, Mozilla's Identity team is still in place, and that team is focusing on "Cloud Services projects including Firefox accounts and Sync." Mozilla will also support Persona at least for the rest of this year, but it's up to the community to move it forward now.