Oracle's Open Source Identity Reborn At ForgeRock

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.'"

Comments

Another life-after-Oracle story:

[MaggieL]

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

Sun's identity platform

[ToasterMonkey]

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.

Re:Sun's identity platform

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Sun's identity platform

[Clayton.Donley]

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

Re:Sun's identity platform

[David Gerard]

+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.

Rhymes with hilarious.

[Roskolnikov]

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.

Re:Chief Solitaire Officer

[a_nonamiss]

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