When I worked on open-source authentication as a student, I never imagined it powering web-scale services like chatgpt.com. Ory Hydra initially began as a Go-based alternative to Keycloak, avoiding complex JVM dependencies. After releasing the first version in 2015, we quickly saw that the initial design wasn't flexible enough. Building a full Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) system from scratch was challenging, prompting a new approach. In late 2016, we shifted our focus to creati...