Open Sauce Software
Tasty titbits from people using Linux and other open source software in business.
Thursday 29 November 2007, 8:13 AM
Linux in directory catch-up with Windows 2000?
An arresting link pops up over at eWeek, where Jason Brooks breaks off from a consideration of the new autumn season versions of all three free Linux distributions - Ubuntu, Fedora and OpenSUSE.
"Why is Linux stuck playing catch-up to Windows 2000?" asks Brooks, and his answer is that in Windows 2000, Microsoft started delivering Active Directory, a scalable directory server to which all Microsoft products have access.
There isn't a comparable open source directory rallying point, says Brooks. A couple of responses point out that there isn't the same need, apparently because Linux is inherently multi-user.
But I wonder if he has a point. When Novell was still attempting to compete against Microsoft with a broad brush, it certainly made NDS (now eDirectory) a major part of its strategy. Based on LDAP, it would be open, and more powerful and scalable. In the way of things, it probably was.
But is there a need for "one" open source directory server? There's currently Fedora Directory Server and OpenLDAP. Or are we back to the argument over whether innovation and diversity is good or bad?
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