OAuth 2.0 is a rewrite of the original OAuth spec, which offers a secure way to sidestep the dilemma of having to hand over passwords to third party sites and apps to access user data. Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Yahoo are among the high-profile sites that have embraced OAuth in some fashion.

Unfortunately, according to Hammer those same big names are at least partly responsible for making OAuth 2.0 the fiendishly complex and convoluted spec that it has become. Hammer is not the first to question the usefulness of OAuth 2.0. In fact, we’ve previously argued that OAuth 2.0′s complexity is hurting the spirit of API experimentation on the web.

Hammer isn’t just questioning OAuth 2.0, he’s abandoned it entirely and completely erased himself from the project, calling it “a bad protocol… bad enough that I no longer want to be associated with it.”

In Hammer’s view OAuth 2.0 is “more complex, less interoperable, less useful, more incomplete, and most importantly, less secure” than its 1.0 cousin.

MORE:  Developer Quits OAuth 2.0 Spec, Calls It ‘a Bad Protocol’ | Webmonkey | Wired.com.