OpenID has a long way to go
OpenID is an open and decentralized identity system as described by it’s homepage. The core idea behind OpenID is to be able to have one login which works with multiple web sites across the Internet so that you don’t have to maintain separate username and passwords for each place you need to login into.
The idea has merits of course, but it lacks one major thing: adoption by web sites which require logins.
In order to get an OpenID, you need to register yourself with a provider. For all you know, you may already have an OpenID because a number of popular sites on the Internet are also OpenID providers (such as Yahoo). Anyway, once you have a provider, you can have an OpenID which you can then use this id to verify yourself to any website which supports OpenID.
However, all is not well with OpenID. Not many sites support this standard yet and there seems to be more providers than sites which support it. ReadWriteWeb.com does a super comprehensive review of OpenID’s status at this link.
We will keep a watch on how OpenID adoption progresses.