is OpenID Connect on the roadmap?

[Cantor, Scott]

On 10/31/12 7:49 PM, "Tom Scavo" <trscavo at gmail.com> wrote:

>I realize the Shib dev team is sorta rebuilding right now but I
>thought I'd bring this up anyway. Are there plans to add OpenID
>Connect to the list of protocols supported by the IdP? It would be
>much easier to introduce OpenID Connect in the InCommon Federation if
>the IdP supported it natively.

Right now there is no roadmap because the board of the consortium has not
formally approved any of the plan being put forth by the developers. I
moved all of the formerly committed work items on the roadmap into the
under discussion section because that's the reality, they're under
discussion at this point.

Separately from that change, the developers have put a proposed work plan
together for the next 6-7 quarters (this one included) and that represents
the mostly consensus view of the people working on the project about what
we can do with the time and resources we have and what the project needs
to be technically sustainable. The previous developer's call agenda email
had a link to that page.

At some point, the board has to either accept that plan, or leave the
developers in limbo. If the former, then the Roadmap page will get
re-updated and I'll move or create work items as necessary to represent
the committed work. If the latter, then it's likely that for some period
of time we'll be working on the plan in a de facto capacity but I probably
won't update the roadmap because it would be inaccurate to say that
anything is "committed".

With respect to what's in that plan, it essentially amounts to current
maintenance, support, and delivery of an SP patch release, an IdP minor
update, and the initial release of IdPv3.

OpenID Connect has never been a committed work item, and was never in
scope for the initial V3 release. Since the funding and prioritization
issues with the project have substantially delayed the V3 work, obviously
any follow on work is similarly delayed.

In terms of technical capability, the plain fact is that the current code
base of the IdP was not designed to handle non-XML protocols without
bypassing a lot of APIs or rewriting code. Among other things, the V3
release was intended to address that problem so that future work, whatever
form it takes, would be much faster. That remains the view of the team,
that we need the technical foundation done.

I'm not going to even suggest for a minute that more money or people will
make this go faster, because it won't. If that's in question, Rod's
suggestion to go read the Mythical Man Month probably is a good one.

But we do need *stable* funding, and the lack of it makes long term
planning very problematic. We're projecting 6-7 quarters partly because
the board asked us to, on faith that we would be around to see it through,
and partly because the reality is that the only way to do anything in a
shorter window would be to essentially shelve the V3 work, and we don't
think that's in the best interest of the project given the essentially
stable state of V2, and the changes needed to support even its more
near-term missing features.

-- Scott