ASP.NET Core 6 and Authentication Servers

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In .NET 3.0 we began shipping IdentityServer4 as part of our template to support the issuing of JWT tokens for SPA and Blazor applications. Sometime after we shipped, the IdentityServer team made an announcement changing the license for future versions of IdentityServer to a reciprocal public license – a license where the code is still open source but if used for commercial purposes then a paid license must be bought. This type of approach is common in the open-source world, where sustaining an income is difficult as your project becomes your full-time work.

Two of the reasons behind the choice to ship IdentityServer was the community’s well-expressed desire that we did not compete with an established open-source project and IdentityServer’s deep knowledge of the identity space. The .NET team are not OAuth and OIDC experts as we focus on providing building blocks for your application and a starting point from which you can be successful. Creating and sustaining an authentication server is a full-time endeavor, and Microsoft already has a team and a product in that area, Azure Active Directory, which allows 500,000 objects for free. The ASP.NET team feels a managed cloud solution remains the best practical option for developers – the security is managed, you don’t store credentials locally with the risks that presents, and new features like passwordless authentication appear seamlessly in your authentication workflow. However, we also realize that a cloud solution can be impossible for some customers due to regulatory or data sovereignty concerns.

For .NET 6 we will continue to ship IdentityServer in our templates, using the new RPL licensed version. We continue to think this is the most mature option for creating self-deployed, locally hosted token service with ASP.NET Core. We will make the licensing requirement clear if you are using a template that includes Duende IdentityServer. The new Duende IdentityServer continues to be open source, but now has a dual license. This license allows it to be used for free for development, testing, and learning, free for non-commercial open source, and free for use in commercial settings if the entity or organization makes less than 1 million USD/year. The license requires a fee to be used in used in a commercial setting if the entity or organization makes more than 1M USD/year. The previous version of IdentityServer will continue to be supported for as long as .NET 5 is supported, until around February 2022.

For .NET 7 we will investigate if we can build tooling to allow development and testing of OIDC (OpenID Connect) enabled applications when disconnected from the internet. You will always be free to choose whatever identity system is best for you in production by updating a few lines of code when you’re ready to go live. We’re committed to giving you options for production identity systems now and going forward.

Discussion of this announcement can be found at dotnet/aspnetcore#32494