As announced by the OpenID Foundation, the OpenID membership has approved Implementer’s Drafts of the three OpenID Connect logout specifications. That means that developers and deployers can now count on the intellectual property protections that come with being Implementer’s Drafts.

These are the first Implementer’s Drafts of these specifications:

  • Front-Channel Logout – Defines a front-channel logout mechanism that does not use an OP iframe on RP pages
  • Back-Channel Logout – Defines a logout mechanism that uses back-channel communication between the OP and RPs being logged out

Whereas, this is the fourth Implementer’s Draft of this specification:

  • Session Management – Defines how to manage OpenID Connect sessions, including postMessage-based logout functionality

Each of these protocols communicate logout requests from OpenID Providers to Relying Parties, but using different mechanisms that are appropriate for different use cases. See the Introduction sections of each of the specifications for descriptions of the mechanisms used and comparisons between them. All the specifications share a common mechanism for communicating logout requests from Relying Parties to OpenID Providers.

As expected, the reviews generated some great feedback on ways to make the specs clearer. I expect the working group to incorporate that feedback in future revisions.