I have deep, deep objections to OAuth, and I hoped this article would espouse some of them, but it doesn't. Instead, this article is basically whining about "programming is hard" which is true but also something anyone trying to solve serious problems got over somewhere between high school and getting a real job.

OAuth is hard because it's pretending to solve a hard technical problem (logging in and sharing some private data securely) while actually solving an easy business problem (how do we (a big company) get smaller companies to outsource as much of their user data as possible to us). It kind of solves the hard technical problem (because bigger companies are better at hiding the data you give them from other companies who don't pay for it, and have all your data anyway). But if that half-assed solution to the hard problem is good enough for you, you aren't actually trying to solve it, you're just to persuade uneducated users you've solved it. In short, OAuth For Dummies would be a tautological title for a book.

I've heard it said that it's okay and even desirable to outsource everything in your business to other companies except your core service. But what service exists without users? If you can't get users to sign up for your service and give you their information, then I'd argue you don't even have users. You might as well quit. This isn't a question of "what's the best way to authorize users?" question it's a "do I even have users?" question.