One of the benefits we talk about with Open Source is that the license and collaborative nature can offer some protection for users should the main supporter disappear. Rarely has this been put to test but here’s an example that came across in my feeds today. OpenSSO was a Sun project that Oracle seemingly killed last week as part of their assimilation / refactoring process. In less than a week, it seems there’s already a commercial organization twilling support the code-base. From ForgeRock’s web page :
ForgeRock OpenAM is the market leading open source Authentication, Authorization, Entitlement and Federation product. ForgeRock is providing the community with a new home for Sun Microsystems’ OpenSSO product.
Good luck to ForgeRock – I recognize quite a few of the names as fellow Sun / iPlanet / Netscape Alumni. It will be interesting to see how this plays out – it got ugly the last time something like this happened.
Rich Sharples' Weblog 