[OpenID] avoiding NIH

[Kevin Turner]

On Mon, 2007-02-26 at 14:17 -0800, Pádraic Brady wrote:
> As for a *second* PHP library - I completely agree its blatant NIH
> (Not Invented Here) practice but that's what is required in order for
> OpenID support to be integrated directly into the Zend Framework under
> a New BSD License and the clean IP policy, as well its PHP5-only
> rules.

Sounds like you've already figured out what you need to do for Zend, but
I think there might be others going through a similar process now or in
the future, and I want them to know that these things are often
negotiable.  If you need a different license, ask us about it.  If you
have any other concerns about IP issues, talk to us.  We didn't write
this code just for the heck of it, we wrote it because we think it's
important for everyone to have stable, secure, full-featured code
available to support OpenID.  We want you to take advantage of that
code, and if there's anything stopping you from doing so, we want to
know about it.

It's great to see more developers involved in this space.  And,
theoretically speaking, it might be better for the ecology if we don't
have a monoculture in OpenID implementations.  But it's also a shame to
duplicate work that's already been done when there's so much work left
to do to build on what everyone here has started.

I know it's easy to write off someone else's code when it seems to not
meet your requirements at first glance, but I hope you'll talk to us
before doing so.  You may think it's not rocket science to write an
OpenID implementation, but writing us an e-mail is even cheaper, I
assure you.  ;)

Cheers,

 - Kevin
   .janrain.com

...who reserves the right to tell you "I know what I said about wanting
to provide you with OpenID support code, but you can't run our libraries
on Tcl 7.4."