Backwards compatibility

Josh Hoyt josh at janrain.com
Wed Sep 20 20:30:56 UTC 2006


When making and evaluating proposals, there have been many references
to backwards compatibility. I'm not sure that everyone has the same
idea what it means to be backwards compatible.

There are at least two meanings that I can see:

1. Messages that are valid OpenID 2.0 messages are also valid OpenID
1.1 messages

2. It is possible for implementations to differentiate between OpenID
1.1 and 2.0 and to construct appropriate messages. In essence, it's a
different protocol.

I've been focused on maintaining (1). How do you see it?

Josh



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