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Oracle Shuttering OpenSSO
mdm42 writes "OpenSSO is one of the best open source web Single Sign On projects out there. Sun Microsystems made OpenSSO open source in 2008, so it's sad to see how, after absorbing Sun, Oracle is shutting down this amazing project, labelling it 'not strategic' and dismembering the few parts they think are worthwhile for their own SSO effort. They started by freezing the next express release, and during the last few weeks they have been removing all the open source downloads from the OpenSSO website and removing content from the wiki. Fortunately, a Norwegian company called ForgeRock has stepped up to the plate in an attempt to salvage the project under the new name OpenAM."
Sadly, probably yes...
This may be a test to see if they get attention for shutting down an open source project they inherited in order to also in the long run do the same to MySQL and possibly also other OpenSource projects.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Why can't Oracle just leave OpenSSO open source but no longer maintain it? Why the need to rename the project or software? I hope the management at Oracle and the former Sun roast in Hell.
Because they want to monazite any parts of it they can pilfer. I used to refer to this practice as 'Frankensteining', but when it comes to Oracle I don't want to tarnish the good name of Frankenstein.
I think it is more likely they would provide much less support and engineering resources for it going forward, leaving it to the community outside of Sun to keep it feature and bug competitive.
Pretty much what I meant...but a fork surely won't be as credible with the corporate suits as a product with Sun behind it.
Shame, MySQL & Ooffice are both great products IMHO.
Maybe a white knight (with a Red Hat?) will take it over, but I'm sure if they're too successful than Larry will find a way to stymie it...
Losing SPARC doesn't make much sense for Oracle. They already are closing down their x86 business and all the talk from them has been about investing in / focusing more on their SPARC (read more expensive) integrated system offerings
Yea, and pretty much any time some propritary software package is terminated, it is almost certainly available for sale to someone else so it can be taken over if its worth it to someone.
The reason it doesn't happen is because the projects that get cut are the ones that no one cares enough about to continue development.
The license of the software pretty much no effect on its ability survive, its worth to someone else does.
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Is it? Or is OpenSSO simply inconsequential?
I've never understood the appeal of SSO solutions. Joe Sixpack doesn't give a damn. It's never been made simple enough for him to "get". A handful of geeks may think it's awesome. But the rest of the real world doesn't care.
Snoracle is probably totally safe with this.
John
Yeah, I'll second this. We thankfully have an SSO solution at our company, and everybody seems to love it. I'm myself not an "average user", but even I would probably kill myself in short order if I had to manually enter my credentials every time I accessed on of our internal systems. And not only it's more convenient, it's also probably more secure, since users don't need to have a bunch of post-it notes with passwords stuck to their monitors.
Most SSO in organizations I've ever seen seem to work by connecting the user directory to Kerberos, and use that for authentication to everything. Depending on how well IT department set up token forwarding, you may need to enter your credentials to access many systems, but everything in the company, from signing into the Windows Domain, to authenticating to the database uses Kerberos, so you have exactly one password to remember.
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