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Oracle's Open Source Identity Reborn At ForgeRock

Posted by Soulskill on from the don't-break-this-one dept.

darthcamaro writes "Oracle trashed a lot of former Sun technologies — not the least of which is Sun's open source identity platform which included OpenSSO and OpenDS. Now open source startup ForgeRock has taken those castoffs and created a business that has been running successfully for year. 'My personal goal here is to prove that you can have an open source business that is profitable,' said Simon Phipps, former chief open source officer at Sun and now chief strategy officer at ForgeRock. 'Having principles and having profit are not mutually exclusive.'"

76 comments

  1. Are these the new Baby Bells? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Are these the new Baby Bells?

    1. Re:Are these the new Baby Bells? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Are they encased in red wax?

  2. "running successfully for year"? What the fuck? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What the fuck is "running successfully for year" supposed to mean?

    1. Re:"running successfully for year"? What the fuck? by dgatwood · · Score: 2

      It probably means they haven't burned through their VC funding yet. Give it time.

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    2. Re:"running successfully for year"? What the fuck? by larry+bagina · · Score: 1

      It means they have a CEO, CSO (S = Strategy) and 5 vice presidents. (Do they even have employees that write code?).

      I think it means they used up their VC cash and are desperate for Oracle to buy them out.

      --
      Do you even lift?

      These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

    3. Re:"running successfully for year"? What the fuck? by pipatron · · Score: 0

      You could of course RTFA to find out. What do you think it means? What is the most likely meaning? Do you have severe autism so that you can not parse a simple sentence and ignore minor mistakes to get to the actual meaning behind the words?

      --
      c++; /* this makes c bigger but returns the old value */
    4. Re:"running successfully for year"? What the fuck? by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 1

      Without actually reading TFA, it could be "for a year" or "for years". Such "minor" mistakes only serve to increase ambiguity and make it harder to get at the actual meaning behind the words.

      Plus, you'd think it'd be embarrassing by now to have that kind of sloppiness on the Slashdot front page.

      --
      Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
    5. Re:"running successfully for year"? What the fuck? by ciaran_o_riordan · · Score: 1

      > you'd think it'd be embarrassing by now to have that kind of sloppiness on the Slashdot front page.

      Ha! Gotcha!

      Ok, it was an in-joke that you couldn't have spotted. Slashdot pay someone to add minor sloppiness just to wind you up. Your comments give them a much needed laugh on a slow Saturday.

      --
      Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
  3. No profitable open source businesses? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    So he hasn't heard of Red Hat then?

    1. Re:No profitable open source businesses? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not exactly what I would call profitable. Their P/E ratio is ~90 and even in the best years, they barely got under 50.

  4. Another life-after-Oracle story: by MaggieL · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://openwonderland.org/ is about to celebrate their first post-fork anniversary

    --
    -=Maggie Leber=-
    1. Re:Another life-after-Oracle story: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thanks! I assumed they died in the fire.

  5. those who have by G3ckoG33k · · Score: 1

    "'Having principles and having profit are not mutually exclusive.'""

    Principal profits is exclusively for those who have.

  6. Sounds more like by EnsilZah · · Score: 1

    Oracle's porn name?

  7. OLD NEWS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This has already been documented over and over... but Slashdot's desire to trash Oracle and m$ can never be satisfied, so let's give some free marketing to ForgeRock.

  8. Chief Solitaire Officer by Elbereth · · Score: 0

    "chief open source officer", "chief strategy officer"

    Huh? Is this what you call someone who sits around all day at a computer, playing solitaire?

    1. Re:Chief Solitaire Officer by a_nonamiss · · Score: 4, Funny

      Most companies have a whole department of those people. They're called "Project Managers."

      --
      -Arthur
      Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
  9. Sun's identity platform by ToasterMonkey · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Oracle trashed a lot of former Sun technologies â" not the least of which is Sun's open source identity platform which included OpenSSO and OpenDS.

    Uh.. I don't get it. Oracle still sells these, the DS anyway, maybe Sun's SSO was tossed, but Oracle had their own identity platform too. It's surprising enough that Sun's DS is still available and prominently listed.
    http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/id-mgmt/overview/index-085178.html?ssSourceSiteId=ocomen

    And, the corresponding open source projects are still here http://www.opends.org/ and here http://java.net/projects/opensso

    Is this a silly way to say Oracle is not commercializing Sun's open source versions of the projects Oracle _owns_ and is selling? Isn't that kind of good for open source? I would think more distance between Oracle and OpenDS/OpenSSO would be a GOOD thing for the health of the open source projects?

    Oh.. this is a slashvertisement, shit, and I fell for it.

    1. Re:Sun's identity platform by Compaqt · · Score: 2

      Well, it might be a slashvertisement, but I was able to learn about a tech stack which might come in handy. Also, is it only a slashvertisement when someone writes an article about a small company vs. a large corp?

      --
      I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
    2. Re:Sun's identity platform by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      If you actually try buying some of that stuff you will quickly find that Oracle has not got the faintest idea about how they are supposed to support Sun hardware, much less the heavier enterprise portfolios. They are all there in the price lists, but there are absolutely nobody around who can help with issues.

    3. Re:Sun's identity platform by helixcode123 · · Score: 1

      My reading of the article was that they didn't feel Oracle was resourcing the projects appropriately so they took the ball to start their own game, so to speak. I take it the products in TFA are competitors to Microsoft's Active Directory and Oracle's own SSO system (but more distributed since they seem to be incorporating OAuth).

      --

      In a band? Use WheresTheGig for free.

    4. Re:Sun's identity platform by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oracle directory server != commercial version of Opends. Both are separate products and Oracle isn't doing anything commercial with OpenDS.

    5. Re:Sun's identity platform by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Na, Oracle basically killed the projects. I don't give DS at Oracle a future either, they don't need it. The company I work for has a lot of SUN products in use, AFAIK not once in the last two years did they hear anything anymore from anyone. Not Sun, not Oracle.

      Had they called and said: "Hey, let's talk..." they might have had a chance to get their own products in place. But nobody cared. So, we are going with ForgeRock and Liferay now.

    6. Re:Sun's identity platform by Clayton.Donley · · Score: 4, Informative

      As the Oracle director responsible for all of Oracle's directory services technology (including OpenDS) and a long-time open source proponent (Google my name), I'd like to take particular issue with this article's assertions related to OpenDS.

      Oracle has absolutely not "trashed" OpenDS technology. There have been significant commits to the open source repository since the acquisition. While we don't sell "express" builds, we are absolutely committed to commercializing much of this technology in other forms along-side Oracle's directory virtualization, synchronization, and management technologies.

      The fact of the matter is that the bulk of the commits to this code base have been and continue to be made by people that remain employed by Oracle. Copying a source repository and doing a bulk rename (i.e. forking the code) is hardly something to celebrate. I am certainly disappointed at the level of FUD being directed at the OpenDS project and the engineers that continue to work so hard to take it to the next level.

      Clayton Donley, Sr. Director, Development
      Oracle Identity Management

    7. Re:Sun's identity platform by David+Gerard · · Score: 3, Insightful

      +1

      Oracle haven't a goddamn clue what to do with the business they bought.

      I have nine years' Solaris on my resume. I advised my boss and boss's boss to move us from Solaris to Linux as soon as Oracle bought them. Even paying Red Hat, at least they'll do more with our money than snort it on Larry Ellison's yacht. Even running the Oracle database, we'll run it on Linux. Solaris has no future, only a slowly dwindling present.

      Your SPARC hardware is now decorative relics. Well, it was already. But Solaris on Dell runs fantastically well ... until Oracle started charging £300 for the privilege of doing so for a year. HAVE YOU HEARD OF LINUX? I HEAR IT'S QUITE A POPULAR x86 UNIX-LIKE.

      They can't even patent-troll the sort of victim who'll roll over. No, they had to start on Google. Good Lord.

      --
      http://rocknerd.co.uk
    8. Re:Sun's identity platform by Nimey · · Score: 1

      That's pretty typical of Oracle's acquisitions, not so?

      --
      Hail Eris, full of mischief...

      E pluribus sanguinem
    9. Re:Sun's identity platform by cyber-vandal · · Score: 1

      You were doing so well and then you had to type "take it to the next level" :-(

    10. Re:Sun's identity platform by tkrotchko · · Score: 1

      The went after Google only because Oracle really has no mobile strategy (which should be considered serious gap by their shareholders). Somebody over there in Oracle-land figured that they could get a few bucks from Google, and a percentage of Android revenue if they went after them.

      I suspect it will be much harder than they think.

      --
      You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
    11. Re:Sun's identity platform by wangmaster · · Score: 2

      If you had taken a little more time to do some research you would have found that the Sun DS product you linked to (now called Oracle DS EE) is a rebranding of the Sun DS 7.0. This is not OpenDS. OpenDS was slated to be the next generation replacement for the Sun DS . While OpenDS has not been officially canned, the project has had significant setbacks with developers leaving or being let go and commits to it have slowed down considerably since Oracle took over.

      And same thing with OpenSSO. Had you done a little bit of research you would have found that Oracle has removed all downloads for the OpenSSO product leaving only the source code, which yes, for an open source project, that is the guts, but Oracle dismantling the downloads and effectively no longer supporting the previous downloads is the same as killing the project.

      I don't consider this a slashvertisement. I consider this a very good commentary on the strengths of open source, the bumpy road of the Oracle purchase of Sun, and a good example of how a good product can continue on with it's open source roots and succeed without having to compromise on those open source roots.

    12. Re:Sun's identity platform by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So does that mean you plan to work with ForgeRock? Or are you, like the rest of Oracle, incapable of playing nicely with other developers and intent on equating "community" only with "paying customers"?

    13. Re:Sun's identity platform by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I love this comment. Made me laugh. Next time I call Oracle support I will have to work the snorting our money on Larry's yacht bit. 8^)

      Yes, my company's IT team is quite happy to use alternatives when replacing our aging Sun products.

    14. Re:Sun's identity platform by David+Gerard · · Score: 1

      You're ex-Sun? For God's sake, get out while you still can.

      --
      http://rocknerd.co.uk
    15. Re:Sun's identity platform by yuhong · · Score: 1

      I think many Sun people leaving certainly didn't help here. Over time this will be resolved though.

    16. Re:Sun's identity platform by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The fact that the OpenDS site is still there says nothing about the state of the product. It might not be totally dead, but its also not terribly active. Just look at the top left corner: "Sponsored by Sun". Also the main developer behind OpenDS is now at forgerock: http://ludopoitou.wordpress.com/2010/10/21/hello-forgerock/

    17. Re:Sun's identity platform by AlXtreme · · Score: 1

      Oracle has absolutely not "trashed" OpenDS technology

      Oracle has trashed OpenSSO though, which was a pity.

      I'm glad ForgeRock picked up the pieces, I guess Oracle was afraid it might cut into their "enterprise" IM business.

      --
      This sig is intentionally left blank
    18. Re:Sun's identity platform by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Can you please point me to the actively maintained OpenSSO repository, and explain Oracle's plans for it's future? The last time I asked an Oracle sales rep about this, he said Oracle had no plans to continue supporting OpenSSO, and that they were directing all customers to their commercial offering. Is this is not true, someone needs to clarify this with the sales folks.

    19. Re:Sun's identity platform by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The fact of the matter is that the bulk of the commits to this code base have been and continue to be made by people that remain employed by Oracle.

      I think you meant "... have been made by people who used to work at SUN / Oracle but now work at ForgeRock"

    20. Re:Sun's identity platform by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh really. When I went to the big kick off of the Oracle buy out in Atlanta you guys basically said all Sun tech would be dead buy 2014. This included OpenDS, Java Messaging, OpenOSS and really all of Sun's open sourced products. When asked about these products your people went into a sales pitch to pitch Orcale's version of these products. I wish I had kept a copy of the slide presentation. You are NOT pushing or really selling OpenDS but are pushing Oracle's implementation of it "Oracle Identity Management" which is an expensive broken POS. You guys are only working hard at trashing everything Sun ever did. That is the only thing you guys are working hard at. Well also working hard at robbing your customers.

      That kick off in Atlanta was a sad day and a room FULL of pissed off Sun Customers. I know I was one of them. Hell I went the just the other day to check on OpenDS and the link to download it was "Not Found" and you say its still out? Who's bull shitting who here?

      Proof http://java.net/projects/opends/public/downloads_index.html

      We "were" a Sun shop and planning a massive Java Messaging cluster and planning on using DS as our Identity Management but with your buy out all that went out the window after seeing you little kick off presentation in Atlanta. I am real glad that the buy out happened BEFORE this major upgrade. We are now hard at work replacing Sun systems with Linux.

      Just to be clear it has nothing to do with being free software. We happily PAID FOR SUPPORT from Sun and paid a lot and really never used it. Sun Systems was an honest company run by engineers that worked hard to make life easier and better for IT geeks. Oracle has been and still is a company out to rob their customers of as much money as they can and sell them broken applications that can only be dealt with by expensive consultants. AS far as I see there is no level of FUD being directed at the OpenDS project only the truth. Really Clayton it isn't good to lie to sell your product.

      I glad to see good people picking up some of these great projects and saving them from the raping you have put on them. I would like to see this done with Java Messaging. It WAS a great messaging system.

      Thank you for the chance to express myself to one of the senior staff at Oracle and to tell you and all at Oracle to Go fuck yourself We ain't using your shit now even if it was free which it is not!

    21. Re:Sun's identity platform by VortexCortex · · Score: 1

      Clayton Donley, Sr. Director, Development
      Oracle Identity Management

      Hmm, Well, of course an identity manager would attempt to manage Oracle's identity by posting something like the above.

      So long as you're not astroturfing for Microsoft, we'll allow it.

    22. Re:Sun's identity platform by coredog64 · · Score: 1

      My employer bought a license for a Sun product that was dumped in favor of the Oracle version (Java CAPS). JCAPS is barely on life support @ Oracle -- they're committed to bug fixes and that's it. There will be no additional features, and the really cool stuff, like Fuji, that was promised "real soon now" is gone along with the talent that worked on it. As a result, we've foregone support and saved about $30k/year.

      On the other hand, ForgeRock has taken the core of JCAPS (OpenESB) and is working on delivering the stuff that Sun had previously committed to.

    23. Re:Sun's identity platform by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I agree that the OpenDS project is dead. Not only commits in the OpenDS project have slowed down considerably but there is no visibility of any work being done: the developers' mailing list only contains automatic emails of a forgotten nightly build factory; bugs in the issue tracker are not updated, not even acknowledged.
      Just look at the project members' list, there's only a single developer and 3 administrators, compared to the 40 something committers when Sun was still in charge !

    24. Re:Sun's identity platform by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oracle-land? The lawsuit against Google was part of Sun's sales pitch to Oracle and other potential buyers. Ellison must have thought it was a good idea, but the idea didn't come from Oracle.

  10. Licensing Open Source by FtDFtM · · Score: 1

    Open Source does not have to be FOSS. Why not charge those that profit? If we are going to have motivation for companies to invest in open source rather than proprietary solutions, there there needs to be more than a warm fuzzy feeling. Open Source offered for free for non-profit or personal use and a fee for for-profit use could work. True, it may harder to collect revenue, so fees will have to be kept low enough to make payment cheaper than avoidance. Or am I just smokin' rope?

    1. Re:Licensing Open Source by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The Free in FOSS refers to freedom, not cost. Many companies charge for services, so your ideas are not new.

    2. Re:Licensing Open Source by BitZtream · · Score: 2

      The Free in FOSS refers to freedom, not cost. Many companies charge for services, so your ideas are not new.

      Then shouldn't it be called LOSS?

      I'm just sayin' ... Libre is more accurate than Free, and LOSS is far more accurate than FOSS

      --
      Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
    3. Re:Licensing Open Source by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Please stop with the "Libre" thing. No one other than us nerds even knows (or cares) what the word means. They also don't care that Feee as in Freedom is different and distinct from Free as in price. IN fat, all they care is that is is Free as in money. Then, if they're Apple fanboys they insist it's crap because it doesn't cost more than a week's salary. They like things that are expensive and exclusive because they ARE EXPAENSIVE AND EXCLUSIVE (like jewelry, the more over-priced it is, the more value it has to them becuase only they, and they're limited circle of peers who they consider to be the elites of the wold, can afford to have it [or so they delude themselves to believe]). In other words, you don't need to clarify what Free means to people who care (they already know) and clarifying it with words like Libre is useless to try to convince those who perceive value in exclusivitiy. Just give it up.

    4. Re:Licensing Open Source by Draek · · Score: 1

      Attrocious pun aside, by that logic it should be called "Software Libre", to follow Spanish grammar rules rather than those of English, given that "libre" isn't an english word to begin with.

      --
      No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
    5. Re:Licensing Open Source by toriver · · Score: 1

      Libre is also French.

      Freedom is not Gratisdom.

    6. Re:Licensing Open Source by SteveFoerster · · Score: 1

      Besides, unambiguous words like "unencumbered" and "liberated" already exist in English, so importing "libre" is unnecessary.

      --
      Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
  11. Rhymes with hilarious. by Roskolnikov · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Solarryus.

    If Larry is in to profit he is in for it all; any kindness would result in less profit.

    Look at it this way, Ponytail went too far in open sourcing everything he could, he literally slashed Sun's throat, Oracle has participated in open source
    previous to the Sun acquisition and I suspect will continue to do so; what they will not do is lift their britches for free.

    I don't like where the support model is head for Solaris, someone got the idea that 20% of their customer base resulted in 80% of their profit, this equation often
    holds true, if you cut the 80 percent that is left and look at the 20% as 100% you'll be able to once more say 80% of my profit comes from 20% of my customers.

    Either way I see a lot of the whining coming out of the Sun acquisition coming from the very same people who put Sun in a position to be acquired.

    As someone who has made a fairly good career out of supporting Solaris I believe what Larry is doing will at the very least keep Solaris around for a while longer
    and that suits me just fine.

    --
    Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
    1. Re:Rhymes with hilarious. by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 0

      Look at it this way, Ponytail went too far in open sourcing everything he could, he literally slashed Sun's throat

      literally? does it LITERALLY rain cats and dogs where you are?

      anyway, Red Hat seems to be doing quite well and to my knowledge they dont have any closed source software. seems the premise of your argument is flawed, LITERALLY.

      --
      Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    2. Re:Rhymes with hilarious. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Surely you mean they will not drop their pants for free, or have I got the wrong impression of their business model?

    3. Re:Rhymes with hilarious. by gnola14 · · Score: 1

      >>he literally slashed Sun's throat[..]
      I think this applies http://xkcd.com/725/

    4. Re:Rhymes with hilarious. by David+Gerard · · Score: 1

      "Ponytail went too far in open sourcing everything he could, he literally slashed Sun's throat"

      Sun was already fucked before Schwartz. He went hell for open source as a last ditch Hail Mary pass.

      I just so, so wish they'd gone with IBM not Oracle. I'd still be able to do Solaris for a living.

      --
      http://rocknerd.co.uk
    5. Re:Rhymes with hilarious. by Roskolnikov · · Score: 1

      Yes it LITERALLY rains cats and dogs, doesn't it do that on your planet, I suppose if you tossed some off the roof it would, I hear it rained blackbirds in Arkansas, maybe the cats chase the birds and in turn the dogs chase them?

      Red Hat does seem to be doing well enough, they built their business from day one on open source, its not easy to do but you can profit while open, what is not
      easy to do is take a commercial entity that has grown fat and inefficient running on a closed model, snap your fingers and say its open source.

      So, you believe that Ponytail helped Sun?

      And yes I meant britches down, its either lift the skirt or drop the britches, the mistake is funny.

      --
      Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
    6. Re:Rhymes with hilarious. by tkrotchko · · Score: 1

      " I believe what Larry is doing will at the very least keep Solaris around for a while longer
      and that suits me just fine."

      Solaris rapidly appears to be headed towards IBM Mainframe-land. The cost of business for companies who cannot easily switch away.

      As long as you're within 5-10 years of retirement, I think your strategy is sound, as long as you don't mind moving around the country.

      --
      You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
    7. Re:Rhymes with hilarious. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, if you recall the interview with McNealy that was linked here a while back, he did state that Sun waited too long to make some of its products -- especially Solaris -- available for x86. He also talked about Sun's involvement in Open Source.

      The picture is much more complicated than just blaming "Ponytail." Sun was already losing money for years -- and mind share. The latter was more important. In 2004, McNealy paid off SCO and trash talked Linux. Was that a better strategy? As soon as I read that I walked over to my company's admin and told him I felt Sun would be gone within 10 years if they continued behaving like they did then. The admin laughed at me. Well, even a broken clock is right twice a day, and so was I.

      By the time Johny Schwartz started Open Sourcing (and even that under the special Sun CDDL license crap) everything, the writing was on the wall. He was trying to compete with Linux and get as many of Sun's products into the hands of geeks the world over as possible. He ran out of time. It happens. Hey, if McNealy wasn't living in a dream world, he would never have paid hundreds of millions of dollars to build that palace Sun called their headquarters. That could have bought them some time.

      And now Larry's cutting off access to products, or just killing them, if they don't make him money. Just when people were talking about OpenSolaris and even using it at home/work, too.

      I am no Unix/Linux guru, but I liked using Solaris for free. I was introduced to OpenSolaris by a contractor when my company bought new Sun servers. I installed it on a laptop and played around with it. It had some neat features (even apart from ZFS). I really liked the VNC integration -- it was a snap to share the desktop to a remote PC using a web browser (using a web browser on the remote PC to access the OpenSolaris desktop). I now have Solaris installed on another machine (I check my commands on it) -- but I'm illegal.

      Whatever I set up now runs Linux.

    8. Re:Rhymes with hilarious. by coredog64 · · Score: 1

      Don't kid yourself. Oracle wants Solaris, while it would have represented a major competitor for that pile of crap known as AIX. Sure, IBM might have extracted ZFS and Dtrace before throwing the husk into a dumpster, but it would be nothing like the Solaris we enjoy today.

  12. Working with it for several years now... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I am working with Sun software products since about 2003, mostly doing service for a big automotive company.

    Portal was crap (tons of problems, crashes, hangs) and support was even worse, Identity Manager was quite "indescribable", Calendar Server and Mailserver were rather crappy too. And don't get me started on chat server. Well: Good riddance...

    The best things in the portfolio were the Directory Server and the Access Manager. Sure, we had some problems with DS 5.1 and replication, but 5.2 runs smoothly for years now. With AM, it is similar. Some problems during the first years, but version 7.2 runs without any troubles. (We know some bugs/problems and have workarounds implemented, but nothing annoying enough to make us patch the system)

    The best feature are the agents. You can install them on a webserver and they filter all requests. Only if the person has logged in and has the necessary rights, access to an application is granted. We have about 50 applications on IIS, Apache, Sun Webserver and several others in use. Works like a charm! (Sharepoint SSO integration is in planning too and I already feel the pain)

    So, Thumbs up!
    As far as I can tell, those guys did the right thing and cherry-picked the gems out of the portfolio. I am really glad that the product did not die with Sun. It's really a good product. We plan to upgrade to ForgeRock AM in the next couple of months.

    1. Re:Working with it for several years now... by David+Gerard · · Score: 1

      Worst Sun product ever in the universe:

      Sun One web server. Formerly (a long time ago) Netscape Server.

      Good Lord, if ever a product deserved brutal murder ... but that thing can't die.

      I leave it off my resume. I even still have ClearCase there and I leave Sun One web server off.

      --
      http://rocknerd.co.uk
    2. Re:Working with it for several years now... by crabel · · Score: 1

      Na, I definitely vote for Identity Manager. Well, it's not really a Sun product, they just bought it, but that xml language to create workflows was more than horrible The webserver was not that bad IMHO. Never had any real problems with it, but I didn't do a lot with it.

    3. Re:Working with it for several years now... by toriver · · Score: 1

      I believe all traces of iPlanet/SunOne were exorcised when Glassfish junked the last native parts when going from version 2.x to 3.x

      OpenAM (OpenSSO) still calls its cookie iPlanetDirectoryPro though...

  13. Rhymes with hilariou by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    . hilarious Bierce, fierce, Pearce, Peirce, pierce, tierceFabius, scabiousEusebiusamphibious, Polybiusdubious Thaddeus compendiousradius tediousfastidious, hideous, insidious, invidious, perfidiousClaudiuscommodious, melodious, odiousstudious CepheusMorpheus, OrpheusPelagius callipygous Vitelliusalias, Sibelius, VesaliusAurelius, Berzelius, contumelious, Cornelius, Deliusbilious, punctilious, superciliouscoleus toponlinestudy

  14. OpenDS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Oracle open sourced a Nintendo DS emulator?

    1. Re:OpenDS by toriver · · Score: 1

      DS as in Directory Server. Your nerd-fu is weak, you play too many games.

    2. Re:OpenDS by Sparkinator · · Score: 1

      No, they open sourced my foot up your arse.

  15. To be fair by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Oracle does suck.

    The only people who don't think so are the people in charge of Oracle.

    Nobody likes doing business with Oracle; rational people consider it a necessary evil, like taking a dump after a big meal.

  16. with those credentials... by t2t10 · · Score: 1

    Sun's business was built on taking BSD UNIX and making it proprietary, then degrading it further and further. Later, they lied about Java and open source, laying the groundwork for Oracle's lawsuits.

    With that history and those credentials, why would I ever trust the man responsible for open source at Sun?

  17. Darkstar by sproketboy · · Score: 1

    The Darkstar fork is also still very active:

    http://www.reddwarfserver.org/

  18. Successfully? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    While I'm happy with what ForgeRock is trying to do I don't buy their PR. From http://www.forgerock.com/press2011-2-14.html

    - turnover exceeded $2M US
    - 35 employees

    on average only $57k per employee of "turnover", don't really believe they are "successful" yet and I don't see why lying. Either they pay peanuts to their emplyees (whom I believe are mostly in Europe and that's only €41k) or their are losing money

    1. Re:Successfully? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Huh? You think they had 35 employees all year? Very unlikely. And they are self-funded so the founders were probably not taking salary for a big chunk of the year. So either your math sucks or you are trying to FUD a bunch of people working hard to start a new business. Either way that's a big fail on your part.

    2. Re:Successfully? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      and do you think they exceeded $2M US "all year"? of course we are taking the final numbers, that's all they published. But the moment you publish turnover numbers in a PR that says "successfully" you are linking the two and those numbers don't look like a success "to me". I have no idea whether they are self-funded or not and I don't care. Hype is as bad as FUD AFAIC

  19. Lustre by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Don't forget that they've dumped Lustre as well. Everyone left Oracle that was working on Lustre in the last few months and some went to WhamCloud.

  20. Blowing Smoke? by gdiff · · Score: 1

    Far be it for anyone to question you, Mr Sr. Director, but one of the advantages of this open source stuff is that people can fact-check you pretty easily. So I did.

    The OpenDS change log is at http://java.net/projects/opends/sources/svn/history?page=1&theme=java.net and while there have indeed been a bunch of updates made, they all seemed to dry up about two months ago (apart from a lone update made this week).

    The OpenDJ change log is at http://sources.forgerock.org/changelog/opendj/ and it seems to me that it is being actively maintained at the moment.

    So while I am sure your words read precisely are factually correct (work has happened since last February), they don't seem to me to recognize the actual situation (nothing much has happened this year). To my eyes, it looks like the Forgerock people are increasing their engagement with the code, while your people have given up. And the only real FUD I can find doing searches is you saying the OpenDJ project is a bad thing because, well, forks are always bad, right. Unless I've found the wrong OpenDS and OpenDJ logs - I've never looked at either before so I may have it all wrong I suppose.

    So. This "next level" you speak about. Is it a level with locked doors that none of us can get into to fact-check you?

  21. You have no idea of history by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sounds like you read your history off the back of a Microsoft advert. Don't worry, when you're old enough to go to school you'll learn about real history based on actual facts and find out about stuff like NFS, tcl/tk, OpenBoot and more recently the way this guy you're libeling here made Java, Unix and a bunch of other stuff into free software against the odds.