I tried really hard to get all defensive and self-righteous about this (and I was, for a bit) but in the cold light of day, ultimately there is merit in what you say, Mike.

There’s not a chance I could reliably explain OpenID to my Dad, in-laws or even my fairly web-savvy wife.

The “directed identity” stuff in OpenID 2.0 does sound more likely to wash with a non-geek audience, I agree.

In OpenID’s defence, though, without its creation (even for spurious “not actually solving a real problem” reasons), we probably wouldn’t have OAuth, and that *is* useful to non-geeks and is being used as such.