Drupal, along with Plone and dotnetnuke, beat some monumentally big playas to the first awards of the OpenID bounty. This is awarded to projects which implement a number of requirements which, together, constitute agreed OpenID functionality. And these three projects passed the finishing line first, despite the likes of Microsoft’s lip-service to the OpenID cause.
Of course, that’s rather glib. Nobody expects Microsoft to distribute anything under an open-source licence any time soon, so they’d never qualify on those grounds, however much effort they put in. And the amount—$5000—is nugatory for a company of Microsoft’s size anyway, so why would they even bother to aim for it? Plus the requirement of implementing OpenID 2.0 rather than 1.1 is a little mean: although there’s almost total backwards compatibility, it’s a heftier infrastructure to have to support, for a gain that some people might not require.
Even considering all those points, the fact remains that three open-source communities have achieved quickly, with minimum outward-facing fuss, what Microsoft is still nodding amiably about; what it probably hasn’t even got beyond the specification stage regarding, if such enormous companies behave in any way like I imagine. Meanwhile the world takes an open step towards OpenID acceptance, and it’s a real achievement by all involved.
(Hat tip to Simon for a potted explanation of OpenID version differences. Any errors or opinions have been entirely introduced by me.)
