We held the first of three planned tenth anniversary celebrations for the completion of OpenID Connect at the OpenID Summit Tokyo 2024. The four panelists were Nov Matake, Ryo Ito, Nat Sakimura, and myself. We shared our perspectives on what led to OpenID Connect, why it succeeded, and what lessons we learned along the way.
The most common refrain throughout our descriptions was the design philosophy to “Keep simple things simple”. I believe that three of the four of us cited it.
I recounted that we even had a thought experiment used to make the “Keep simple things simple” principle actionable in real time: the “Nov Matake Test”. As we considered new features, we’d ask ourselves “Would Nov want to add it to his implementation?” And “Is it simple enough that he could build it in a few hours?”
The other common thread was the criticality of interop testing and certification. We held five rounds of interop testing before finishing the specifications, with the specs being refined after each round based on the feedback received. The early developer feedback was priceless – much of it from Japan!
Our OpenID Connect 10th anniversary presentations were:
Thanks to the OpenID Foundation Japan for the thought-provoking and enjoyable OpenID Summit Tokyo 2024!
In September 1982, artificial intelligence professor Scott Fahlman made a post on the Carnegie Mellon Computer Science Department “general” bboard inventing the original smiley :-). I remember thinking at the time when I read it “what a good idea!”. But in 2002 when I told friends about it, I couldn’t find Scott’s post online anywhere.