What exactly is OAuth (Open Authorization)?

Question

What exactly is OAuth (Open Authorization)?

I have gleaned some information from

• OAuth
• Twitter Tutorial: What is OAuth And What It Means To Y

Answer 1

Simply put OAuth is a way for applications to gain credentials to your information without directly getting your user login information to some website. For example if you write an application on your own website and want it to use data from a user's facebook account, you can use OAuth to get a token via a callback url and then use that token to make calls to the facebook API to get their use data until the token expires. Websites rely on it because it allows programmers to access their data without the user having to directly disclose their information and spread their credentials around online but still provide a level of protection to the data. Will it become the de facto method of authorization? Perhaps, it's been gaining a lot of support recently from Twitter, Facebook, and the likes where other programmers want to build applications around user data.