Open sauce July 31st, 2007
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.)