OpenID 2.0 launched
The open identity system OpenID 2.0 was yesterday finally launched at the Internet Identity Workshop in Mountain View. The new version improves security and usability – and will hopefully be the catalyst for more Internet companies to adopt it.
OpenID Authentication 2.0 and OpenID Attribute Exchange 1.0 were announced as final specifications of the OpenID 2.0.
Both specifications have evolved through extensive community participation and feedback and each have been stable for a number of months. There are already a variety of open source libraries shipping these specifications with product support including Google’s Blogger (Bloggers’s announcement of OpenID Support) and Drupal who did their own implementation of the specifications. Multiple OpenID Providers including MyOpenID, Sxipper, and VeriSign’s PIP already have support for both of these specifications. Given past trends, growing support of OpenID 2.0 should be no different.
Today the following libraries exist which implement OpenID Authentication 1.1 and 2.0, OpenID Attribute Exchange 1.0, and OpenID Simple Registration 1.0:
What is OpenID?
If you register with any of the OpenID Providers mentioned above, you can login with it on any website that supports OpenID. You can also use your existing accounts from a humungous number of services as an OpenID login - AIM, Bloglines, WordPress, etc.
What are the benefits for the user?
- One username/password to rule them all (you can log in to many different accounts)
- In some cases you don’t have to do anything but provide an OpenID in order to start a new account; you can start personalizing a new service really fast.
- You don’t have to trust random new sites with your info, your OpenID authenticator will hold and confirm everything for you.
- You should be able to choose how much of your full profile to expose to different sites you log into.
OpenID announced the entry of some big corps and influential Internet players – Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign, and Yahoo! – joining them in their effort to have a common and authentic login credential across the Internet.
By bringing on these companies and their resources, the OpenID Foundation will now be able to better serve the needs of the entire OpenID community. In 2008, it is expected that OpenID will focus on making OpenID even more accessible to a mainstream audience, the development of a World-wide trademark usage policy (much like the Jabber Foundation and Mozilla have done), and a larger international focus on working with the OpenID communities in Asia and Europe.