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?
"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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