WP-OpenId and User Accounts

Let me start by describing my situation. I’m coding a plugin that changes how users interact with comments and it would be more secure if every commenter had an account with the weblog. I know, seems like the perfect application of OpenId but WP-OpenId (the most complete OpenId implementation I can find) only links a comment to an account if the account is created. This seems a bit foolish in my situation to ask a relatively novice commenter to register on two websites in order to utilize these planned features.

So my question is can anyone provide information on creating Subscriber accounts for OpenId commenters? How I see this working is a standard comment form with a seperate “log in with OpenId” form. When the user enters their OpenId and is verified, a subscriber-level user account is created and linked to that OpenId (if one doesn’t already exist) and the user returns to the comment page with the comment form reflecting their logged in status.

As a bonus user details such as email, website, and nickname are possibly available from the openid provider but if not can be stored into the User table with the comment fields.

Looking through the source of WP-OpenId it is obvious the coders know their way around WordPress so I’m wondering if there’s a reason why this functionality is not included. If it’s a feature-creep reason, then maybe an additional plugin (WP-OpenId-Users) would work.

Sorry for the length, but I’m looking for input and discussion from all sides of this.