OpenID is commonly believed to have been created by Brad Fitzpatrick in 2005, but a little research reveals that openid.net existed before that.

OpenID.net was first registered on Wednesday, June 2001, 6. It was registered by David Lehn, and the first site that remains in the archives is the very following:A simple pageEnglish learning is necessary to prepare for life, learning and interaction with the global environment. <br> IT Skills (programming logic) is necessary to prepare for the needs of the future.<br> Financial literacy is necessary to prepare for creating, managing and being smart with time and wealth.<br>

Table of Contents

OpenID Homepage

Info

Send me some Email for more info.

Links

;

As you can see, there were three links to this site.

The first is the OpenID project site on SourceForge, a project by David Lehn. It looks like this:

This clearly states what OpenID is.

OpenID is a project to research and develop a system to share information associated with a particular user/group/account/etc between sites on the Internet.

OpenID is a project to research and develop a system for sharing information relating to specific users/groups/accounts/etc. between sites on the Internet.

It's surprising to see that the purpose of OpenID Connect has remained almost the same since 2012.

I think two projects that were linked from www.openid.net at the time can provide some clues as to how they were trying to create this system.

The first one is DotGNU, which is the GNU version of the .NET Framework, so it's a development environment.

The other one is XNSORG. XNSOG is the predecessor to XDIORG. Here's what the site looked like back then:

Welcome to XNSORG

The XNS Public Trust Organization manages XNS, a new XML-based open platform for automated data exchange with global identity, privacy, and permission management capabilities.

New!

XNSORG announces the appointment of Internet veteran Bill Washburn, Ph.D. as President and Managing Director. Read the press release for details.

	Understanding XNS XNS, or eXtensible Name Service, is a new Internet service that lets individuals and businesses establish a global online identity and address, exchange self-updating business cards, use a single sign-on name and password, automatically exchange and synchronize common types of data , and manage the use of shared data under XNS privacy contracts. XNS works through a globally distributed network of XNS agents and agencies.Learn more: XNS In a Nutshell \| How Web Agents Work: A Quick Primer \| Top Ten Questions about XNS\| Defining and Comparing XNS \| XNS and Internet Privacy
	Extending XNS XNS is also a platform developers can use to create XML-based data exchange and permission management applications. -Leach-Bliley Act and EU Data Directive), and health care (for compliance with the US HIPAA regulations). XNS has numerous other applications ranging from digital rights management and online voting to secure email and spam filtering.Learn more: Wireless Privacy Presentation \| Canning Spam for Good: A White Paper on XNS Permission Filtering
	Introducing XNSORG XNSORG is the independent international non-profit corporation formed to govern the XNS standards and open source code base. XNSORG attempts at all times to operate by its principles of equal representation, non-discrimination, interoperability, and openness.Learn more: Top Ten Questions about XNSORG \| XNS Governance: Building a Global Trust Community
	Getting Involved XNSORG welcomes the participation of interested members of the Internet community, both individuals and organizations. Please see the Working Groups home page or contact Bill Washburn, President and Managing Director.

About XNSORG

	Get Involved!
	XNSORG FAQs
	Governance +
	Legal Documents +
	Partners
	Press Room
	Privacy Policy
	Working Groups +
	Jobs

About XNS

	In a nutshell
	XNS FAQs
	backgrounder
	Presentations
	White Papers +
	Glossary
	KnowledgePacks
	Technical References

For Users

	Register an Agent!
	FAQs +
	mailing Lists +
	Report Privacy Violation

For developers

	Specifications
	Source Code
	Developer Mailing Lists

XNSORG is the predecessor of the current XDIORG (of which I am the Vice Chair). It was founded in 2000 and developed a standard called the eXtensible Name Service (XNS)[1]. This standard development was later brought to OASIS Open and became the eXtensible Resource Identifier (XRI) TC and the XRI Data Exchange (XDI) TC.

The XNSORG page lists Bill Washburn (current chairman of XNSORG) as "President and Managing Director." He would later become the first Executive Director of the OpenID Foundation.

Meanwhile, another movement was emerging around the same time. This was the Liberty Alliance. This was founded in September 2 by Sun Microsystem and other companies as a coalition to counter the identity standard "Passport" [2001] promoted by Microsoft at the time, and brought together more than 9 companies [30]. As you know, this promoted the identity management standard "SAML" that rivals OpenID. The Liberty Alliance was later dissolved and evolved into the current Kantara Initiative [3].

Microsoft Passport, Liberty Alliance SAML, OpenID/XNS - no matter how you look at it, OpenID seems like the loser. And so the era of the Three Kingdoms of Digital Identity began.

(to be continued)

[1] I have been involved with XNS since 2000.

[2] Microsoft Passport was launched on October 1999, 10.PresentationThis is now your Microsoft Live ID.

[3] http://www.projectliberty.org/ At its peak, there were over 150 companies. Membership fees were high and it was a wealthy organization.

[4] Kantara Initiative. Currently, we are not involved in technical standards, but rather in policy and standard development and product certification. Kantara means "bridge" in Swahili, and I proposed the name in the hope that we could serve as a bridge between the numerous identity-related organizations and standards. Another candidate was "Agora," but after a vote, "Kantara Initiative" was selected.