Gradual Epiphany

Passel

We opened up the [Passel](http://www.passel.org) project site today. I haven't blogged for some time about identity, because every entry I wrote seemed to wind up talking about Passel. So now that it's out in the open, I'm don't have to self-censor so much. I'm very excited about the possibilites.

Passel has been a huge undertaking. Going back through my personal logs, I've been working on it steadily for a solid 7 months now. I never realized how brutally hard it is to take an idea and make it something real. There is a lot of blood, sweat and fried neurons involved. The experience has made me really appreciate the herculean effort that [Jer](http://www.jeremie.com) undertook when he started the [Jabber](http://www.jabber.org) project. Fortunately for me, he's been able to help me out on Passel and let me learn from his experience.

So now, Passel is in the open. There's still a HUGE amount of work to do -- the project is only really marginally developer friendly at this point. The intended audience is a "normal" computer user, so we've got a lot of ground to cover before wide deployment. The good news is that I believe we can get "there" from here -- Passel has the right philosophy, the right technology and (hopefully) the right people. Now we just need to be steadfast and work towards fulfilling the vision for open, decentralized identity for the people...by the people.