Red Hat Acquires Netscape Server Products

KrisWithAK writes "According to a press release, Red Hat is acquiring parts of the Netscape Enterprise Suite including the directory server and certificate management system. I am definitely looking forward to more open source competition with OpenLDAP!"

Comments

I didn't read RTFPR

[GenerallyDynamic]

but I too am definitely looking forward to more open source competition with OpenLDAP!

Ease of LDAP.

[Anonymous Coward]

"I am definitely looking forward to more open source competition with OpenLDAP!"

I'm looking more for an LDAP that's easy to setup and run.

Looks like a good fit.

[kensai]

However a couple of questions.
1. How does the Netscape Directory Server compare to OpenLDAP?
2. Are the two interoperable?

That's still around?

[mcc]

Seriously? I thought the Netscape Enterprise product line fizzled out back when people thought selling pet food on the internet was a good idea.

Do you mind if I ask, how worthwhile are these products to Redhat? What kind of state are they in? How recently have they been updated, are they still in active development or just maitenence mode? Does anyone still use them? And do they offer any worthwhile features or functionality not already available in free products?

are they gonna open source it?

[hruntrung]

I read the press release, and they made reference to integrating the products into the Open Source Architecture, but they don't actually come out and say, "we're gonna make it [insert favorite license here]."

Also, is there any reference documentation for the Open Source Architecture? I'd love it, cause as it stands, sometimes open sources like a disorganized mess.

Increasing Power of Red Hat

[ZSmitty]

Just two years ago AOL was looking to aquire Red Hat. http://slashdot.org/articles/02/01/19/041215.shtml It's amazing how things have changed. Where AOL once wanted Red Hat to be another Netscape for them, Red Hat is now purchasing parts of Netscape from AOL. Personally, I think its great.

Re:Increasing Power of Red Hat

[DrXym]

AOL has basically stripped Netscape down to the bone. After they got their pound of flesh from Microsoft they weren't interested in maintaining it any more. Whole departments were shitcanned and now it's just a small rump serving up content to Netscape.com.

Which is a shame from AOL's perspective since now their AOL client is stuck with an obsolete browser engine, written by their mortal enemy. They could have gone to Gecko but they chose not to. Oh yes - I'm sure MS will be leaping up and down to add new functionality for AOL's sake - NOT.

The sad thing is there were (and are) AOL products that do use Gecko, including at one stage beta of the AOL client. But rather stupidly they never followed through in any serious manner. If they had shipped an AOL client using Gecko there would now be 25+ million additional non-IE users in the US. Even where they did use it, such as AOL Communicator (a Thunderbird like email client) they basically screwed the pooch by implementing the whole app in C++ and using Gecko just to render HTML mail. How stupid is that given they could have written it in XUL in less time?

AOL just doesn't get it. Technology is for them just the means to stick a big shiny button on the start page. That's as good as it gets. Technical considerations such as standards compliance play second fiddle to marketing and dumb ideas to keep their audience happy. I also reckon there was a lot of infighting between the 'establishment' (who develop against IE) and those who want to try something risky even if it means flux in the short term.

Well that's too bad for them. Their customer base is dwindling - sick of the monolithic client, sick of the AWFUL email, sick of the incestuous links, and sick of the pricing. These days I reckon all but the most helpless of their users would be happier with barebones broadband, Firefox / IE combined with an email app. AOL is going to find itself in a niche if it doesn't change soon.

Re:Does OpenLDAP even work?

[Etyenne]

It work fine. Use the package for your distribution, don't try to compile it yourself if you are unsure about what to do. The man page seem to reflect the current command-line options, I don't see much problem here.

LDAP in general and OpenLDAP in particuliar is a complex subject. The initial learning curve is pretty steep. Good luck with it.

Re:Does OpenLDAP even work?

[ElForesto]

Do yourself a BIG favor and get some books on LDAP. If you don't, it's like trying to translate Klingon into Arabic using a poodle as your interpreter. I once tried setting up an LDAP server for a shared address book before I had any clue what I was doing, and I learned to regret that exercise in frustration.

Calendar Server

[anthonyclark]

So whatever happened to Netscape's calendar server?

Way back, I installed it at an R&D facility; the client worked across platforms (solaris and windows) and provided an alternative to the nasty exchange lock-in.

Is there *any* alternative to Exchange now?

Shot across the bow to Novell/SuSE

[mosel-saar-ruwer]

I didn't even realize there still was a standalone Netscape offerring. We migrated from Netscape to iPlanet to Sun Web to Sun Java One (or something like that). Anybody out there stick with the Netscape product?

This is a direct challenge to Novell/SuSE and Novell Directory Services [or eDirectory, or whatever they're calling it this week].

Red Hat must have realized that they needed a directory offering to compete in the enterprise.

That gives us four major directory vendors:

1) Novell/SuSE/Ximian/Novell Directory Services
2) Microsoft/Active Directory
3) Sun/Sun One [iPlanet] 4) RedHat/Netscape Directory Server

PS: Now that the Netscape browser has devolved into Firefox, and the enterprise stuff has been sold to Red Hat, does Netscape still exist as an independent company [other than some "portal" site on the web]?

PPS: And are there any /. CPAs who'd care to calculate AOL's return on investment from the Netscape purchase?

OpenLDAP vs Netscape's LDAP server

[Sxooter]

About three years ago (admittedly, my knowledge is pretty old now) I tested and compared the two. The Netscape LDAP server used up a huge chunk of memory, even sitting idle, and could handle only a few authentication's / searches per second on our dual P-III 750 machine with 1 gig ram. The memory usage, if I recall correctly, was about 50 megs per process (not shared mem, individual memory usage by the way) with a default of something like 5 of them running.

OpenLDAP used about 20 megs of memory total, ramping up to 50 to 100 megs under heavy load. It could handle about 30 to 40 auths / searches a second.

Worse for the Netscape server was that it would just plain stop working after an hour or so of heavy load testing.

We went with OpenLDAP, and wrote our own edit screens for it since at the time it came with nothing very useful to a user (only ldapadd, etc... command line stuff).

After about a year of only handling the web server it was on we pointed our Peoplesoft implementation at it, which proceeded to increase our load from one auth every couple of seconds to about 10 auths a second. Other than the slightly larger number of openldap processes running, we never really noticed the load.

Hope that helps anyone looking at the two. I certainly would hope the Netscape server has gotten better, but everything I've read about it since then seems to say it hasn't.