This week’s big identity news was that Sun Microsystems is adopting OpenID both as feature in certain Sun software, and by giving each Sun employee an OpenID. This is hugely significant for the rise of user-centric, decentralized, URL-based digital identity, as so far, Sun has been known primarily as tireless advocate of the protocols developed by the Liberty Alliance (an organization that Sun had a key hand in putting together). There is even talk that it might come as a standard feature with Java in the future.

This follows other mainstream endorsements of OpenID this year, including from Microsoft, Symantec and AOL. VeriSign did it last year already, and there is also broad support in the startup community. After all, why would you put up N screens in front of your users to sign them up, if one is enough with OpenID?

I’m writing this from the 1st European Identity Conference in München (Munich), Germany, where the mood in the hallways is clearly that OpenID is here to stay, and will continue its explosive adoption this year and next.

Here are some of the relevant links. First the Sun view:
* Press release
* Largely similar article by Linux Magazine
* Commentary by Tim Bray, of Sun (see also some interesting comments there)
* Commentary by Eve Maler, also of Sun
* Commentary by Pat Patterson, also of Sun

Here some comments from OpenID “insiders”:
* Comments by Dick Hardt of Sxip
* Comments by Scott Kveton, previously of Jan Rain
* Comments by David Recordon of VeriSign
* Comments by Johannes Ernst of NetMesh (that would be your’s truly in his private blog …)