December 05, 2007
OpenID 2.0 Spec Approved
John Dorsey
The OpenID Foundation announced the finalized version of OpenID Authentication 2.0 and the related OpenID Attribute Exchange 1.0 specifications
Three members of the OpenID Foundation announced the finalized versions of OpenID Authentication 2.0 and the related OpenID Attribute Exchange 1.0 spec on Monday. David Recordon, Dick Hardt, and Josh Hoyt, who participated in the authoring of OpenID, were attending the Internet Identity Workshop at Computer History Musuem in Mountain View, California when they announced the finalization of the specification, which defines a decentralized, open-source, single-sign on identity framework.
OpenID has been adopted by AOL, LiveJournal, WordPress and thousands of other web sites to allow visitors to identify themselves without needing to create a new login or share sensitive information. Google's Blogger and the Drupal content management platform already support the new spec. The OpenID Attribute Exchange 1.0 spec, also announced on Monday, is a service extension that provides a mechanism for moving identity information between web sites.
OpenID was originally started by Brad Fitzpatrick, and now the OpenID Foundation promotes its adoption. Foundation member companies include Six Apart, Sxip Identity, JanRain, Cordance, NetMesh, Verisign, Microsoft, Yahoo!, AOL, Sun Microsystems, and Symantec. The goal of the Foundation is to ensure that no one company owns the specification, and all contributors to the spec agree to a non-assertion pledge so that all of the intellectual property used in OpenID will remain royalty free and available to the entire community.
The OpenID site provides libraries implementing the specs and information on incorporating OpenID into a web site.
