Why we open sourced Single Sign-On
We just added Single Sign-On functionality to Shaper. And we made it open source.
Single Sign-On (SSO) is the most obvious feature to separate from the main product and sell at a premium to enterprise clients.
You don’t need it to start using the product, but any bigger organization cannot do without it.
Why is SSO crucial to bigger organizations?
Section titled “Why is SSO crucial to bigger organizations?”Obviously it’s not because large organizations care so much about UX and cannot live without the convenience of not having to type a password. Instead, it’s all about security: No weak passwords. Centralized access rights. Audit logging.
Where does this leave smaller companies?
Section titled “Where does this leave smaller companies?”Should they care less about security? Is security something to build later on after you are already successful? I and many others don’t think so. That’s why there are websites like https://sso.tax/.
A Compromise
Section titled “A Compromise”We decided to make SSO part of open source Shaper. But with a nuance:
JWT-based SSO is completely open source. You implement a single endpoint in your application and get complete control over how the user is authenticated. This is the simplest way to integrate Shaper into your existing application.
In addition to this, we provide OpenID Connect integration (OICD) and Proxy Header Auth support as part of our commercial offer. If you have an OICD provider or an internal API gateway integrated in your infrastructure, then integrating with them requires zero custom code. But investing in this infrastructure just for Shaper is definitely more complex than creating a JWT authentication endpoint.
Please reach out if you have any feedback or if you are looking for support with implementing SSO.