The decision by the Identity Gang (now formalized as Identity Commons) to get behind OpenID was an easy one: it was simple single-sign-on, or SSO, and already in use at Live Journal, the popular blogging system created by Brad Fitzpatrick, famous as well for memchached and other fine hacks. Brad also made OpenID open-source, making it easy for developers to work with it, and contribute to it.
One remarkable fact about that Gang meeting (the first Internet Identity Workshop, in 2005) was that leading figures working on other identity systems -- people from Microsoft, Sxip, Cordance (i-names) and Higgins -- all jumped in to find ways of working with OpenID.
Since then there have been many workshops, many meetings, much hacking, and an accelleration of acceptance toward critical mass. You know that's been achieved when Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign, and Yahoo join an organization's board all at once. That happened for the OpenID Foundation in February.
When I asked David Recordon, vice chair of the foundation board and OpenID's highest-profile advocate for his take on things, he said, "In 2007 OpenID saw incredible momentum as it grew from a grassroots technology to a common tool in a developer's arsenal". Already in 2008 it has grown to include support by Google in Blogger and Yahoo! by enabling hundreds of millions of their accounts as OpenIDs".
To find out more, or to get your own OpenID, visit openid.net.
- Doc Searls