There have been some discussions in the background on bringing together OpenID and SAML in some form. It's rather interesting (shocking? gratifying? ...?) to see how many people, companies and initiatives are now willing to drop the not-invented-here syndrome, and collaboratively build the open, free, identity layer for the internet that has been envisioned for such a long time — now it is appearing right on front of our eyes.

We do need to be mindful, though, to always focus on the problem that we intend to solve with a particular piece of technology, such as a SAML+OpenID. Some of the questions on the top of my mind on this subject are:

If we (somehow) mashed-up SAML and OpenID:

• who would care, other than technologists?
• why would they care?
• what problem does this solve that cannot be solved any other way?
• how valuable is a solution to that problem, compared to the cost of delivering the solution?

I know a lot of people interested in both technologies read this blog. If you have an opinion on this, why don't you blog about it?