[Official mod] Facebook Connect

[Norv]

Exactly. Alternative authentication methods should be easy to add as optional mods, and methods for well known social sites authentication APIs use should be developed and supported officially by SMF development - meaning no risk of getting out of date and "abandoned" and so on, as it may happen for third-party mods. The current login subsystem of SMF 2.x may need some rework for that, though. Even OpenID was added in 2.0 with some changes that don't strike me as the best implementation... to put it mildly. But that's the core's job, and only that, have a decent design and implementation allowing additional modules to be hooked easily, while the implementation of a particular authentication method itself (for Facebook, for G+) is better as a mod IMHO - an official mod.

[awolexpat]

Aside from the coding issues that it might bring, I would have thought that having the option to use as many of the social networks as possible built in would be a good thing, with them off by default and the admin having the option to turn any of them on; as any others arise or get created/demanded after the release of SMF 3 that is where the mods should come in I would think, but ones that are already around should be built in if at all possible in my opinion. Surely the idea is to make SMF as good as it can be?

[Kindred]

official mod - yes - great idea.
default - no - bad idea (reasons already explained)

[awolexpat]

OK, so how about having pre-installed mods instead, again off by default, which could also be uninstalled by users if they wish? Would that fit more neatly with the concept? I think it would make SMF a much more attractive package. That could apply to anything else that is popular among existing users but is not desired by the SMF team to be part of the core product.

[Fustrate]

I don't think we'll ever have anything pre-installed. The package manager (probably "plugin manager" in future versions) can easily install it when needed instead of just activating it when needed.

[ModelBoatMayhem]

Official Mod - yes - Default - Definitely no - bad idea.