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."

Comments

This is the way of MySQL too?

[Z00L00K]

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.

Re:This is the way of MySQL too?

[BitZtream]

Or it could be that no one actually gave a shit about OpenSSO outside a very small group of people.

Its funny that everyone assume Oracle is being evil when a simple bit of common sense makes it pretty clear that its a waste of resources from pretty much every perspective to Oracle.

Re:This is the way of MySQL too?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a Snorkel employee (Sun->Oracle) I'll add a simple comment. If it isn't profitable or strategic, it will be shuttered or turned loose to the community to support. It is *as simple as that*.

Re:This is the way of MySQL too?

[Kjella]

Reality check: Nobody buys a company and just carries on because unless it was really mispriced in the market, you've gained nothing. You might as well have put the money in a stock fund. In closed source companies this means projects get canceled, reprioritized, product portfolios are aligned and they search high and low for the claimed synergies they were supposed to get. What happens in open source companies? Exactly this same. There's been quite a few of these stories now and they're all full of trivial projects and tin foil hat conspiracy. I just checked Digg and THEY got better stories than this. I'm quite the geek but still... stuff that matters. Or is at least cool, interesting or funny in a nerdy way. But not "Minor corporate politics" for 100$, I'll pass Alex.

Risks and Benefits of OSS

[olyar]

As much as this is a bummer, it's actually a great example of the OSS model at work.

If this was a closed source solution, where the company got acquired and the product wasn't strategic, the solution would just be gone.

With OSS though, another company - for whom the solution is strategic - can step in and pick up the project.

Re:Risks and Benefits of OSS

[Anonymous Coward]

Not true.

Let me cite an example in the exact same market space: CA acquired Netegrity because they wanted SiteMinder even though they (CA) already had a web SSO product. In addition to SiteMinder (their main business) Netegrity had a provisioning product. After the acquisition closed CA shot their in house SSO product and shot Netegrity's provisioning product.

CA would never have even considered selling either product to anyone else at any price for two reasons:
* why compete with a product you created when you already own it
and
* it's better to migrate your existing customers on the "to be killed" product over to the strategic product than to sell them off along with the product you're killing.

This happens throughout the software industry every time there's an acquisition and some overlapping products. The acquirer decides which products will live on, which will be shot immediately and which will be put onto life support until customers can be gently moved off onto the strategic product.

The only difference here, as the grandparent says, is that someone can grab the code and resources and carry on.

Re:MySQL next?

[Locke2005]

Why so sad? This only proves that you can't kill an open source project; any worthwhile project will have someone else pick up the development, with or without forking it. If Sun attempts to "kill" MySQL, somebody else will pick that up too. Sure, repurposing the paid developers formerly working on the project is a real loss to the project, but not a fatal one.

Re:MySQL next?

[seebs]

Gee, if only we had PostgreSQL doing just fine as an alternative, then I wouldn't mind so much if MySQL went away.